EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson defended the agency's role in regulating greenhouse gas at a Tuesday budget hearing. Some Republican senators back a bill to strip the EPA of that authority.
By Mark Clayton Staff writer / February 23, 2010
Clashes over climate change dominated a Senate hearing Tuesday on the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, amid signs some senators may soon try to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead of talking about dollars and cents, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson mostly found herself defending her agency's key finding last year that greenhouse gases endanger human health and the environment.
That conclusion provided the EPA with legal authority under the Clean Air Act to begin regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes, beginning in April. In turn, that move will start the clock on regulating so-called stationary, or smokestack, sources of carbon dioxide and other warming gases.
The EPA's steps also may be key to any Obama administration hopes to give new momentum to a climate-energy bill currently stalled in the Senate. The threat of EPA regulation of greenhouse gases had been “the stick,” some said, to press Congress to a legislated solution. Without that threat, there is little hope the Congress would act, observers say.
"To have that EPA authority seems critical to any hope for a climate-energy bill, since Congress is at a stalemate," says Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. "Now the opponents of action are going to Congress with a new message: Let's disarm EPA."
Against that backdrop, Sen. Kit Bond (R) of Missouri fired an early salvo during the budget hearing, arguing that EPA “back-door regulations” on greenhouse gases would “kill jobs.” Sen. David Vitter (R) of Louisiana said unearthed e-mails showed some scientists on the International Panel on Climate Change kept adverse findings secret and “raise very serious questions” about the group's credibility and conclusions. The EPA, he said, relied on IPCC findings and therefore “can't forge ahead” with regulation.
But Ms. Jackson responded bluntly, citing the findings of many respected US agencies and scientific bodies that echo her agency’s own finding that climate change is a danger.
“Let me begin by being direct: The science behind climate change is settled and human activity is responsible for global warming,” she said. “Not only have America's top scientific institutions come to that conclusion, but so have numerous other industrialized countries.”
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