WASHINGTON — In ruling last month that greenhouse gases posed health and safety risks, the Environmental Protection Agency brushed aside warnings from Bush administration holdovers who said the move was "likely to have serious economic consequences" for small businesses and the economy overall, according to documents obtained Tuesday.
Obama administration officials said the warnings, contained in memos from the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, didn't reflect current White House policy. The office is still stocked with Bush appointees, the administration officials said.
Nevertheless, Republicans hailed the memos as a sign of internal dissent over the EPA finding, which was considered an important step toward the Obama administration's goal of taking major action against carbon dioxide and other emissions that scientists say contribute to global warming.
Questioning EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in a committee hearing Tuesday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) called the memos "a smoking gun, saying that your findings were political and not scientific." Environmentalists and the White House dismissed the dissent as reflecting the Bush administration's long-standing position on climate change.
The critique was the work of "someone who didn't get the memo that the old administration has come to an end," said David Doniger, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate center.
White House budget director Peter R. Orszag was not available for comment, but he wrote on his blog Tuesday that his office would not have allowed the EPA to move forward with its proposed ruling "if we had concerns about whether EPA's finding was consistent with either the law or the underlying science."
One of the critical memos said the proposed endangerment finding could open the door to lawsuits that might force the government to impose restrictions on such unrelated matters as electromagnetic fields and noise pollution.
A companion document, from the same Small Business Administration source, questioned the basis for the EPA's statement that greenhouse gases "overwhelmingly" endanger public health and welfare.
Predictions of devastating climate change are "accompanied by uncertainties so large that they potentially overwhelm the magnitude of the harm," the document said.
