Power plants' carbon-dioxide emissions would be subject to regulation under a new EPA finding that CO2 endangers human health and the environment. This coal-fired plant is in San Juan County, N.M.
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Carbon emissions pose danger, EPA finds
Agency’s move lays the foundation for expanding US regulation of thousands of companies.
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer/ April 17, 2009 edition
Reporter Mark Clayton discusses the potential effects of Friday's EPA greenhouse gases announcement.
Reporter Mark Clayton
In deciding that carbon dioxide poses a danger to human health and the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency has laid the groundwork for new and expansive federal oversight of carmakers, utilities, and a host of other large emitters of the greenhouse gas.
The EPA’s finding, announced Friday, is likely to act as a big nudge to Congress to take quicker action on new energy and climate legislation that sets carbon-emissions limits. Many lawmakers and companies would prefer to see limits set by Congress rather than regulations set by the EPA. Indeed, the Obama administration has made clear that it, too, prefers a legislative approach.
The finding also bolsters the Obama administration’s standing heading into international talks in December on addressing climate change, in that it is the most assertive stance yet taken by the United States. Moreover, it may also pave the way for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which keeps watch over Wall Street, to require companies to disclose carbon-emissions costs and liabilities that could affect their businesses.
In adding carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to the list of compounds that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act, the EPA creates a legal basis for limiting CO2 emitted from tailpipes – an authority the US Supreme Court has said the agency could claim but that the Bush administration declined. Automobiles are a major source of C02, and the EPA action Friday signals that the Obama administration intends to take a more aggressive approach to addressing global warming.
“This is a victory for the Clean Air Act,” said Martin Hayden of Earthjustice, an environmental group, in a statement after the EPA issued its finding. “The Obama administration has removed a road block in curbing pollution responsible for climate change and signaled a turn toward a clean energy future. We applaud this action and welcome the president’s leadership to overcome the greatest environmental challenge of our time.”
Too much expense to bear?
Others, however, say the prospect that scores of industries and thousands of companies may soon be required to comply with a new environmental regulation is an outrage, especially given the flattened state of the US economy. In a recent letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, conservative taxpayer and political groups, led by the Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank, declared that the agency’s action “will set the stage for an economic train wreck.” The EPA finding represents a “potent antistimulus package,” CEI senior fellow Marlo Lewis said in a statement.
The worry is that the finding will cover not only vehicle tailpipe emissions of CO2, but also all stationary sources spewing more than 250 tons per year, the CEI argues. Former EPA chief Stephen Johnson, an appointee of President Bush, raised that possibility in a letter last summer.
Environmentalists dismiss as “scare tactics” the claims that myriad businesses will be shuttered and the minutia of daily life will be regulated as a result of the EPA action.
“There are a number of scare stories out there…, the premise of which is that if EPA does anything under any part of the Clean Air Act, it will necessarily have to do everything everywhere to any imaginable source of carbon dioxide,” said David Doniger, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a telephone briefing with reporters April 14. “That’s just not true.”
Scare claims, he says, “did not convince the Supreme Court and should not convince anyone [that CO2 regulation] is going to go beyond the big central sources.” The EPA “is able to focus on the big stuff – the big sources of global warming pollution,” the biggest of which are motor vehicles and power plants. Other stationary sources, such as cement plans and oil refineries, would also probably be required to reduce emissions, says Mr. Doniger.
Before the finding becomes final, the public will have the opportunity to comment on it. The EPA says it based its work “on rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific analysis” of six gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride.
“This finding confirms that greenhouse-gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations,” the EPA’s Ms. Jackson said Friday in a statement. “Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation. This pollution problem has a solution.”
A prod to congressional action
One immediate beneficiary of the EPA move may be a piece of legislation in the House of Representatives. The Waxman-Markey bill, named after cosponsoring Reps. Henry Waxman (D) of California and Edward Markey (D) of Massachusetts, would reorient the nation’s sources of power generation to renewables and set up a carbon trading system that includes a cap on CO2 emissions from power plants and other key sources.
Many business interests and lawmakers are resisting the legislation – yet they could ultimately come to see it as a lesser evil than EPA regulation. The bill contains two sentences that “succinctly defuse regulatory triggers” under the Clean Air Act, “positioning Waxman-Markey as a way to limit the EPA threat,” writes Kevin Book, an analyst for ClearView Energy Partners, an investment analysis company focused on energy.
Representative Markey, at a conference Monday on climate and energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described a carrot-and-stick approach to passing the energy-climate bill.
The possibility of EPA regulation of carbon-dioxide emissions “has become a very real factor in our deliberations,” he said. “If Congress doesn’t act, then clearly there is a residual decision by the US Supreme Court for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. The only way to avoid that is to have Congress act…. It becomes a real factor.”
EPA at work on another rule
Even without Friday’s finding, thousands of US companies were preparing to report their CO2 emissions in anticipation of another new EPA rule. That proposal would require about 13,000 facilities nationwide to report annual greenhouse-gas emissions beginning in 2011. Companies that emit 25,000 or more metric tons of CO2 equivalents a year are responsible for as much as 90 percent of the nation’s greenhouse-gas emissions, the EPA estimates.
Although that reporting requirement would not impose any limits on emissions, it would be a first step toward establishing a national emissions-reduction plan, regulatory experts say.
Friday’s finding may also accelerate disclosure requirements on Wall Street. For years, environmental groups, state officials, and state pension fund managers have called for public companies to be required to report climate-change risks that could affect firms’ operations, including the cost impact of complying with greenhouse-gas regulations.
Though the Securities and Exchange Commission has not acted, it is likely to feel greater pressure to require more corporate disclosure about climate-change risks as a result of the EPA’s endangerment finding and its mandatory-reporting proposal, David Lynn and coauthors at Morrison & Foerster wrote in a newsletter on the topic.
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Comments
2. Ryan Heart | 04.17.09
Political Humor….
Water-boarding may help polluter combatants admit that green jobs would be created by the new EPA findings, but I would only use this harsh technique during an ecological crisis….
3. STUART | 04.17.09
America continues to move towards third world status. Destroying its economy through free trade and outsourcing of jobs. Our Congress is corrupt and bought and paid for.Now we will heavily tax the industries that remain. The cost of politically correct carbon mania will be much higher electric bills and consumer prices just when we are entering a depression. We are becoming a socialist fascist country.Our country will soon be regulated by international rules and regulations leading to a loss of control over our own country. Do you expect international committees to do whats best for the United States. I dont think so. Wake up America.
4. Realista | 04.17.09
… Hard to Realize, Just Three Months Ago, Bush and Cheney’s EPA
.. said United States Federal, State, and Municipal Governments “cannot regulate carbon dioxide or methane”, since “Global Warming a Liberal Conspiracy”!
6. Eriemaster | 04.17.09
Proof of what?
I have been looking for the scientific proof. This is what I have found:
There is reason to believe there has been rapid global warming.
It is likely that human generated CO2 has contributed to global warming.
The total CO2 is increasing due to humans but this consitutes a small portion of our total greenhouse gas which incudes water vapor.
However it is not proven that human generated CO2 is the major contributor to global warming.
It is in not proven that drastic reductions in human generated CO2 will have much effect on global warming.
It makes sense to conserve. However there may not be much financial or climate benefit to it.
7. David | 04.17.09
As much as I despised the Bush administration and all it stood for, and as much as I’m for protecting the environment and wildlife, I’m afraid that CO2 regulation will have disastrous consequences. I’m all for regulating the halogenated hydrocarbons and for rational approaches to development of alternative sources of energy, but there is just no good evidence that CO2 emissions are hazardous to health and welfare. CO2 is not a toxin. It is only harmful in the absence of oxygen, i.e., an asphyxiant, and we have plenty of oxygen. Even assuming that CO2 is responsible for the modest global warming seen in the 20th century, there are potential benefits to a warmer climate and to crop yields from higher CO2 that are ignored in the health and welfare equation. If all of the focus and funding now given to CO2 were directed to real environmental problems as opposed to assumed ones, our world would be a better place for both humans and wildlife. How much CO2 consuming rain forest in the Amazon, Indonesia, New Guinea, and Africa could we buy and preserve for what we are about to expend on this manufactured crisis? (Lots and lots!) Our focus should be on energy independence not taxing CO2. Tax foreign (non North American) oil and gas. Tax coal and oil companies for remediation of the real damage that mining, drilling, and spills do to the environment, not CO2 emissions. Taxing C)2 is just wrong-headed. Beware the laws of unintended consequences.
Public Health Professional
8. Matt | 04.17.09
As I have heard, Samuel Martin Kier, considered the grandfather of the American Oil Industry, used to dump off the excess crude oil into a river, after extracting kerosene. Later it would be realized the worth of that crude oil. Later they would reuse the water from the drilling process to pressurize the well to extract more oil. Less and less waste.
In a recent Monitor article http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/04/03/how-microbes-can-power-america%E2%80%99s-future/ it points out that even the CO2 can be used to make methane.
Maybe just maybe, this will help us to appreciate the full value of each component in the system. No need to poor off that yucky old crude oil into the river!!
A Japanese auto executive responded to the claim that cars are about as developed as they can be by pointing out the horse. It eats hay, the horse’s manure can be used to fertilize more hay. Not bad
9. Perry Celsus | 04.17.09
With so much crackpot paranoia being written on the subject, what a pleasure to read such clear-headed and insightful analysis as that of “Stuart” (#2). His logic is impeccable: if we attempt to limit our pollution and carbon emissions, we’ll continue “to move towards third world status.” As long as we’re allowed spew as much carbon and pollution as we like, we’ll be well on our way to the gloriously pristine air found in Bangkok, New Delhi and Nigeria.
Thank you, Stuart, for the clarity of your “wake-up call.”
10. dom youngross | 04.17.09
Vegas casino lights and displays. NASCAR races. Idling cars at fast-food drive-thru lanes. Untold millions and billions of acres of lawn, with thousands upon thousands of Kubotas and Cub Cadets parked in garages and sheds. Presidential campaigns approaching a billion dollars in cost where the candidates have to be physically present over and over in every podunk town across the US. For reasons such as those, and how much energy is consumed by those activities, I don’t take global warmers seriously.
And how many millions of tons of diesel and aviation fuel has been burned to establish ‘democracy’ in places like Iraq and Afghanistan?
And how much energy (electricity, fuel) is consumed as a matter of course because two-income families are the norm because of taxes and inflation?
There’s a lot of needless stuff that needs to end, along with the energy those things consume, before carping about global warming and green house gases. It should be clear that cap and traders want all the energy waste to continue, but under even more economic burden. And guess what that added economic burden will cause? Increased energy consumption!
“Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation.”
Obama. What a clown.
11. Mike Higgins | 04.17.09
Very insightful comments from both John #1 and Stuart #2. I agree wholehearted with their assessments.
12. Scott | 04.17.09
The cost of doing nothing to halt the impending climate disruption that we’ve brought upon ourselves will far outweight the costs of retooling for renewable energy sources. Heck, it will be a boost for the economy to invest in clean energy– it would be a good idea even if CO2 wasn’t a huge problem.
13. PIBoulder | 04.17.09
Hearing this news today was depressing. I feel as though ignorance is ruling around me, with people thinking they know what is real when they believe in a fantasy. Most of the greenhouse gases in the list of EPA regulations here are in even smaller concentrations than CO2. They are too statistically small to matter. Methane does not stay in the atmosphere long enough to mean anything in the scheme of things, yet the EPA asserts it has the right to regulate it. I am firmly convinced that CO2 has little to do with the Earth’s climate patterns because I have looked over the scientific information on it. I know enough about computers to know that some climate scientists are selling us a bill of goods with their climate models in order to preserve their careers. This is an abuse of science not unlike eugenics was. The unfortunate thing is it isn’t going to end here. The veritable industry that is global warming alarmism can only stay in business if people “have to deal with the problem”. Once the problem is “solved” they’re out of a job. I agree with Stuart. Please America, wake up!
14. not posting quickly | 04.17.09
“..carbon dioxide poses a danger to human health and the environment..” guess what? So does unemployment.
“This is a victory for the Clean Air Act” No, its a victory for China, India, Mexico, and every where else that doesn’t have to comply with expensive compliance.
First, American jobs exit overseas because Americans can’t live on fifty bucks a year, thanks to a tax system that insists on worker safety, social catch nets, expensive military and space programs, clean water, highways, and so on. Now, the geniuses in Washington have found yet another stick to beat remaining jobs out of the country by increasing the costs to operate here.
Are these people terrorists or what?
15. Jack | 04.17.09
What about all those jet planes that spew more CO2 than thousands of cars? All those government officials flying everywhere every day with those jet planes burning billions of gallons of jet fuel (diesel) and dumping tne residue into the air. I guess we’ll just have to shut congress down and make them all discuss and vote online. We could probably save a few million tons of polutants per month doing just that.
16. Len Dyson | 04.17.09
Now, finally exposed to the attention of those suffering below, is the deleterious results of emissions from Commercial aircraft at high altitude, belching heavy hydro-carbon exhausts, distributed around the earth by jet streams and natural air currents, leaving no area unprotected. Raining death and suet destruction on all it touches beneath.
By taking immediate progressive steps to cut aerial emissions, we can save countless lives and eliminate suffering if we have the will to regulate these air traffic onerous greenhouse gas emissions. That’s the good news.”
For 60 years, Commercial Jet Aircraft have smoked up the skies with deadly grimy exhaust…..5 miles high…..Tankers full of kerosene….stacked like dirty plates……dumping poorly burned fuel between destinations … tracking along aerial interstates…..filling the atmosphere with layers of heat absorbing hydrocarbons, disrupting the natural ability for surface moisture to rise and cause rain where needed……prolonged western drought…..a deadly increase in aberrant weather around the Nation and World…..Global warming in all the wrong places…..all because of the rush to arrive at destination hours quicker…..and below, all over America and the world a 500% increase in asthma and lung disease as humans, wildlife and forests are dying because of the constant raining down of particulates that smother, destroy and cause havoc.
It is time Citizens become aware and look up and see for themselves…..Best viewed at dawn or dusk…Endless contrails of smokey carbon laden residue……Decide we have had enough of this deadly man made pollution…..Expose it…Break the imposed silence….Unmask this sacred cow and bring it into the light of day…..A major cause of Global warming….A public health menace…..A challenge that must be met…..Quickly…..Now…..Today.
Len Dyson
17. David | 04.17.09
It amazes me that we continue to debate what is an issue of common sense and that we are more worried about money and costs than the health of the planet and it’s inhabitants.
Of course our excessive CO2 emmissions are a hazard. From what I read ( and see with my own eyes), we cannot afford to delay any longer.
If we can’t quickly learn to live in balance with Mother Earth, then surely we deserve our fate.
Somehow, I don’t think motgages and financial challenges will seem so important when clean air, clean water, and adequate food are a rarity.
18. Think Again | 04.18.09
About time they regulated CO2.
Why should poor people starve around the world as droughts devastate their crops just because Mary next door want to drive that huge SUV?
19. sheila | 04.19.09
What you conveniently ignore is that SF6 was one of the other 5 gases named by the EPA, and it is not only 24,000 times as harmful as CO2, but 80% of it is used and emitted by the electricity transmission industry - you know, the beloved “Super Grid” that the greenwashers have been promoting?
I keep saying it - Big Energy, including Big Solar, Big Wind and Big Transmission are going to VASTLY INCREASE GLOBAL WARMING with their rapacious profiteering. The Nature Conservancy casually mentioned yesterday in WaPo that an additional 50 MILLION ACRES of our fragile wilderness would need to be permanently destroyed to support the Big Solar and Big Wind profit machines.
This is an absolute confrontation now. If you are not 100% supporting point of use solutions that will NOT increase global warming and will NOT murder our open spaces, then you are a total enemy of the environment. There is NO excuse for any more greenwashing and political cover for Big Energy profiteers.
Please, stop killing our polar bears with your Big Transmission and start saving them by supporting feed in tariffs and loans for oversized rooftop solar and efficiency systems. We cannot waste any more time listening to liars!!
20. PIBoulder | 04.20.09
David said:
“It amazes me that we continue to debate what is an issue of common sense and that we are more worried about money and costs than the health of the planet and it’s inhabitants.”
It amazes me that people like you forget about the poor who cannot afford renewable energy sources. You expect everyone to buy a hydrogen non-polluting car. If you’re making minimum wage that’s a tall order. Or I guess you expect the poor and middle class to give up their cars and take buses. Solar panels on the roof? Again, what if people can’t afford the up front costs. Should they be forced to move out of their houses to rent? And on what cause? The theory that CO2 causes global warming is pseudo-science. You do realize that we exhale CO2 don’t you? Eventually the truth will be known. And what will society think of science after people have been dislocated by this crock that parades in the name of science? I think we will enter an age where science is discredited and superstition will reign again. It’s already happening, though instead of people believing in evil sorcerers now people are suspicious of energy producers and factories.
“Somehow, I don’t think motgages and financial challenges will seem so important when clean air, clean water, and adequate food are a rarity.”
And what does this have to do with the issue? CO2 is not “dirty”. It’s an invisible, odorless, and an entirely natural gas. If you’re talking about particulate pollution we’ve reduced it dramatically from what it was 30-40 years ago. We are now more friendly to the planet than we were then. But no, it’s not enough for you. No matter what we do to be even more “friendly” it will never be enough for you.
22. Roze | 09.04.09
Yeah, but are we willing to sacrifice our environment and our childrens future for an increased tax on carbon? I say that this tax is a small price to pay for the betterment of our world.
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1. John | 04.17.09
I believe this will have disproportionately bad economic consequences for lower income individuals. Companies will pass these costs onto consumers in the end. Cap and trade will be yet another derivatives market that will allow companies to manipulate what everyone pays for their electricity (remember Enron anyone)?
I have lived through the Maryland vehicle emissions testing and let me tell you; if you do not own a newer car, you are in for a rude awakening. Not only does the car’s owner have to pay for the testing, but if you fail the test you have to jump through hoops to make your car pass. Talk about hitting struggling families right in the wallet.
I sure hope this is given some serious thought by our politicians. Oh wait, they barely read what they sign as it is.