WASHINGTON — President Bush could be forcing President-elect Barack Obama to act almost immediately to curb global warming, after years of the Bush administration fighting attempts to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions.
Or, depending on which interpretation prevails, Bush could be giving his successor much-needed breathing room on a volatile issue. In its final weeks, his administration has moved to close what it calls "back doors" to regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
It barred the Environmental Protection Agency from considering the effects of global warming on protected species. And, more broadly, it excluded carbon dioxide from a list of pollutants that the EPA regulates under the Clean Air Act.
Environmentalists view the moves as a last-minute attempt to block speedy, executive action by the president-elect on climate change, an issue that Obama repeatedly has called a top concern. And they say those moves could backfire -- by prompting lawsuits and fueling fights over coal-fired power plants that the new administration would need to resolve quickly.
Obama "now has to clean up a mess," said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club, which has challenged the EPA over the Clean Air Act decision and plans to sue to block it. "They're forcing him to act sooner than he otherwise might have."
Yet energy lobbyists predict the challenges will fail. They say the Bush administration's actions give Obama time and political cover to take a more deliberative approach to emissions regulation and avoid overly broad, overly swift rules that could slow construction projects for schools and businesses, not just power plants.
"I'm quite confident that the Obama administration will have no interest in coming in and immediately reversing" the decisions, said Jeffrey Holmstead, a former EPA clean air administrator who now represents energy industry clients at the lobbying firm Bracewell & Giuliani in Washington.
Underlying the debate is the issue of how the federal government should reduce emissions of the gases that scientists blame for global warming, including carbon dioxide. Congress has long debated, but never approved, a so-called cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions.
