EPA Trying to Get Back on Track

EPA, no longer the emitter protection agency?
EPA, no longer the emitter protection agency?
After years of being a Bush-administration bedfellow in practicing faux-science and lax environmental regulations, EPA under new leadership is trying to get ahead of the game.

In the recent weeks, Obama has been overriding program after program and rule after rule under the Bush-era EPA, including a rule that would have allowed developers to forgo expert consultation on endangered species and a program that would have awarded voluntary pollution controls for hundreds of corporations with reduced environmental inspections and less stringent regulation.

Recently, the new and hopefully improved EPA sent a proposed finding that carbon dioxide is a danger to public health, with elevated levels leading to the potential of more severe heat waves and droughts and more frequent storms and fires. Along the same lines, according to the Wall Street Journal article, the agency earlier this month proposed a national system for reporting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions by major emitters. The EPA has said about 13,000 facilities, accounting for about 85% to 90% of greenhouse gases emitted in the U.S., would be covered under the proposal.

In effect, EPA's findings mean that carbon dioxide could be labeled a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Of course, industry and business groups are up in arms about this, bringing up the false dichotomy of environmental protection versus economic stimulus. But don't worry, their lobbying power is still quite influential (see Grist story), so it'll be a struggle.

On a side note, in their reporting of the latest on the EPA proposal, the WSJ showed that it still had some catching up to do. Besides saying that "carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases [are] believed to contribute to climate change," the WSJ also published a blog entitled "Economy v. Environment: Can the Stimulus Really Be Green?" which I encourage you to read and comment on (I've already given me 2 cents there). While doing a good job of pointing out the weaknesses of Obama's stimulus package, it nevertheless claims that there are latent contradictions between the two types of green--fighting climate change and stimulating the economy. Please, save me the false dichotomies. We don't live in a world of black and white.

These two maps below show CO2 emissions by country and GDP per person. Note that greater wealth does not necessarily correspond to greater CO2 emissions. (See more cool maps at Show®.)