Word: epa
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...Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change laid out the definitive case that human beings were causing global warming, and two decades since NASA scientist James Hansen first told Congress of the threat of rising CO2 emissions. So, why has it taken this long for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to announce that greenhouse gases endanger human health? Change can be slow in Washington...
...March 20 the EPA sent what is called an "endangerment finding" to the White House, a proposal that means the agency found that there is a scientific case that man-made global warming poses a threat to human welfare. (Reporters found out about the EPA decision the following Monday, after it was posted on a government website.) The finding is a response to an April 2007 Supreme Court decision ordering the EPA to figure out how CO2 from cars should be regulated under the Clean...
...Scientific staff in the George W. Bush-era EPA found that CO2 is a pollutant, but then administrator Stephen Johnson rejected the recommendation and delayed the process of regulating it, part of the Bush Administration's general obstructionism on climate change. When Lisa Jackson took over the EPA under the new President, however, she told Congress that one of her first acts would be to reevaluate her predecessor's decision, and she didn't drag her feet. "It's an exercise in leadership that takes the first step in regulating CO2 emissions from automobiles," says John Walke, the clean...
...concluding that greenhouse gases pose a threat to human welfare, the EPA's finding could lay the groundwork for nationwide regulation of CO2 emissions - just as the EPA is require to regulate pollutants like smog-causing sulfur dioxide. But regulating CO2 will be immensely more complicated - the U.S. emitted over 6 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2007 from countless sources - and business groups have raised the specter of a meddlesome EPA using greenhouse gases as an excuse to regulate projects large and small...
...unilateral Executive Branch action, while mandated by a Supreme Court decision in April 2007 that said the EPA must decide how to regulate greenhouse gases, upsets many members on Capitol Hill. The EPA "said they have the ability to do this under the law. The law doesn't come from the Supreme Court; the law comes from Congress," Nelson said. "If they want to go, 'Giddyap,' we're in the position to go, 'Whoa,' and pass legislation if necessary. If the administrator wants to ignore the intent of Congress, the administrator takes a sizable risk...