Efficiency First

As the United Nations summit on climate change gets under way in Copenhagen this week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has made a formal declaration that emissions of greenhouse gases pose a serious threat to human health. The announcement, which culminates a lengthy scientific review ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, sets the stage for strict federal regulation of carbon dioxide and other GHGs. Here is an excerpt from TIME magazine’s coverage of the EPA determination:

Jackson’s announcement is the final step in a response that has been nearly three years in coming — since April 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the Clean Air Act gives the EPA the authority to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases, if they are indeed a threat to human health and welfare. At the time, the Court directed the agency to review the latest science on climate change in order to make a determination.

Under former President George W. Bush, the EPA largely punted on the question, even burying analysis from its own scientists in the waning months of his administration. When President Barack Obama took office, he directed the new EPA to kick-start the regulation process — nearly 11 months and 380,000 public comments later, the agency is now poised to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. “This cements 2009′s place in history as the year the U.S. government began seriously addressing the challenge of greenhouse gas pollution,” said Jackson.

Although the announcement had been in the pipeline for a while, the timing was appropriate — with Copenhagen just getting under way. The EPA ruling is a signal to other countries that the U.S. is prepared to contribute to a climate treaty, and it is a useful tool for President Obama, who will participate in the Copenhagen summit on Dec. 18, its final day. “In light of the EPA endangerment finding, the President’s appearance in Copenhagen will carry even more weight, because it shows that America is taking this issue very seriously and is moving forward,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, the head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in a statement.

It is not clear what the EPA’s decision will mean practically for major emitters. Jackson said she did not have a time table for when the agency would publish a detailed plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and both Jackson and Obama have said repeatedly that they would prefer legislative action — in the form of a carbon cap-and-trade bill — over top-down regulation. The House has already passed a bill that would cap U.S. carbon emissions at 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, and the Senate is considering similar legislation. The threat of EPA regulation might be enough to nudge the Senate in the right direction. “We still need to pass a Senate bill because we need a long-term, clear signal about the effort we will undertake to cut carbon,” said Jack Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Read the rest of the article here:
www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1946095,00.html

The EPA press release and a video of Jackson’s speech are available here.