EPA Clears the Way for Regulation of Greenhouse Gases
John M. Broder, NY Times, April 17, 2009
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has formally declared carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases (GHGs) are pollutants that threaten public health and welfare. The endangerment finding triggers a 60-day comment period, but this is likely the impetus for the regulation of GHGs in the US.
The EPA finding could potentially lead to a wave of new regulations, putting stricter emissions limits on a wide range of enterprises from power plants and oil refineries to automobiles and cement makers.
Even as the EPA begins the process of regulating GHGs (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride) under the Clean Air Act, Congress is engaged in writing wide-ranging energy and climate change legislation that could pre-empt any action taken by the agency. President Obama and Lisa Jackson, the EPA Administrator, have repeatedly said that they prefer that Congress address global warming rather than the EPA addressing it through administrative action.
Read the EPA press release here.
Read the complete NY Times article here.
Similar stories are also running in the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Previously on the Northgate Sustainability Forum:
EPA Takes Another Step Towards Regulating Greenhouse Gases.
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