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The Politics of Danger
On Tuesday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the agency has determined global warming pollution is a danger to human health.
President Obama will be arriving at the international climate talks in Copenhagen with this EPA statement in tow to remind everyone he is serious about reducing U.S. carbon emissions.
But the EPA decision does much more than simply influence perceptions abroad. It should also grab the attention of Congress. The message it is sending is clear: It’s your turn to act offensively on global warming.
I asked a senator what he thought was needed for Congress to act. He said he wished the EPA would declare global warming pollution a health hazard, because he knew it would give his colleagues the kick in the pants they need to pass climate legislation.
Once the EPA concludes that a form of pollution endangers human health, it is required by law to regulate the release of that pollutant. In other words, the EPA will start doing what Congress has failed to do so far: limit greenhouse gas emissions.
Last week, Senator Jim Webb sent President Obama a letter expressing his concern that the White House might think it has unilateral powers to negotiate climate agreements in Copenhagen. Webb wrote, “As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country.”
But if the Senate doesn’t want the White House or the EPA calling all the shots, it needs to get into the game too.
The truth is Congress can do a much better job confronting harmful carbon emissions than the EPA, which only has the power to say how much pollution can be released. Congress can deliver a comprehensive package of job safeguards, consumer price protections, and incentives for private investment in clean energy. I hope this endangerment finding gets the Senate to take meaningful action.
One Hill staffer asked me today, “Why is the endangerment decision coming out now? Doesn’t the administration have to go back and reexamine the science after Climategate?”
They are referring, of course, to the emails hacked from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit. The emails involve a tiny fraction of the climate science community and focus on one tiny field of research in the context of climate science: tree ring records.
None of this email chatter changes the scientific consensus established by authorities from NASA to the Pentagon to the American Academy of Sciences. Nor does it change the facts that we can see with our very own eyes. Do we need to fuss over tree ring data when we can see that an entire town in Louisiana and a Native community in Alaska must be moved because of sea-level rise?
The science is clear, despite some vague questions from Hill staffers. The EPA’s ruling just further verifies the obvious: that global warming is harming us all.
Hopefully, Congress got the memo.
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