Word: epa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced that the agency would reconsider a Bush Administration decision not to regulate CO2 emissions from new coal power plants. The next day, she backed up that statement by telling the New York Times she was considering acting on an April 2007 Supreme Court decision that empowers the EPA to regulate CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. If the EPA exercises that authority as expected - a process that would likely play out over months - it could potentially put in place one of the farthest-reaching regulations in U.S. history, affecting...
...However, carrying out the law will be anything but simple, nor will it be the most efficient way to protect the environment. The 2007 court case in question gave the EPA the authority to regulate CO2, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of 12 states, led by Massachusetts, that brought suit against the government to force it to regulate greenhouse gases. The Bush Administration largely ignored the implications of that decision for the next two years, likely in part because of complaints from industry that regulating CO2 would be expensive and maddeningly complicated. That's a point well taken...
...reality, observers say the EPA is unlikely to pursue small emitters in any carbon regulation, instead focusing on reining in big sources like power plants and automobiles, which together are responsible for some 60% of U.S. carbon emissions. Such action could have momentous consequences for the scores of new coal power plants that have been proposed across the U.S., an expansion that environmentalists are dead set against...
...EPA could also exercise the power it has to regulate carbon emissions from cars - perhaps by insisting on stronger fuel-economy standards like the ones being advanced by California or by mandating a carbon standard for fuels. "It's really critical, when the country is making a decision to pour massive capital investment into new cars and power plants, that the moves are harmonized to address greenhouse-gas emissions," says Vickie Patton, a senior attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund...
...Even most environmentalists, however, don't really want to see the EPA take all the responsibility for reducing carbon emissions, using a law that was drafted before climate change was a known threat. Instead, they see federal regulations as a protective stopgap measure until Congress can pass national carbon cap-and-trade legislation specifically tailored to global warming. "It's not going to be easy, but it can be done," says Doniger. Since the only thing that coal-industry executives and other fossil-fuel peddlers fear more than a carbon cap is EPA regulation, he might just be right...