Administration rejects regulating greenhouse gases
Washington -- The Bush administration today rejected regulating greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would damage the U.S. economy and cause too many job losses.
In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection Agency made no finding on whether global warming poses a threat to people's health, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress.
The White House on Thursday rejected EPA's conclusion three weeks earlier that the 1970 Clean Air Act can be both workable and effective for addressing global climate change. Instead, EPA said today that law is "ill-suited" for dealing with climate change.
"If our nation is truly about serious regulating greenhouse gases, the Clean Air Act is the wrong tool for the job," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson told reporters. "It is really at the feet of Congress."
This contrasts sharply with the tone of statements President Bush made at the just-concluded G-8 summit of leading industrialized nations in Japan. The United States at that meeting joined other summit partners in embracing a policy declaration to seek a 50% reduction in global greenhouse gases by 2050.
In a major setback to the administration, the Supreme Court ruled last year that the government has authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant. Bush has consistently opposed that option.
But Congress hasn't found the will to do much about the problem either. Supporters of regulating greenhouse gases could get only 48 votes in the 100-member Senate last month. The House has held several hearings on the problem but no votes on any bill addressing it. The two major presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, have endorsed variations of the approach rejected by the Senate.
In its voluminous document, the EPA laid out a buffet of options on how to reduce greenhouse gases from cars, ships, trains, power plants, factories and refineries.
"One point is clear: the potential regulation of greenhouse gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land," Johnson said in a preface to the federal notice.
