Bad news for the economy: EPA refuses review of CO2 "endangerment" finding

Author: Ted Hadzi-Antich

On July 28, 2010, EPA denied the petition by Pacific Legal Foundation to reconsider the agency's "endangerment" finding under the Clean Air Act, a finding that lays the groundwork for stringent regulation of greenhouse gases and could impose a crippling impact on the American economy. 

The denial was unwarranted and flies in the face of thousands of pages of evidence (sometimes referred to as the "Climategate" emails) questioning the data underlying the finding. 

In light of the Climategate revelations, PLF asked the EPA to reconvene the regulatory proceeding in order to afford the blue-ribbon Science Advisory Board the opportunity to review the Climategate data in detail and advise EPA whether the data requires a rescission or at least a serious reconsideration of the endangerment finding.

Unfortunately, EPA refused to allow the Science Advisory Board to review the Climategate evidence, casting a shadow over the entire regulatory proceeding.

PLF is in the process of analyzing EPA’s denial in detail and will determine its next steps. So far it appears that, by any fair yardstick, EPA’s refusal to send the information to the Science Advisory Board is based on politics and will have the effect of preventing further scientific review of the controversial data. The "Climategate" affair should have taught everyone that there is a need for greater openness in science; this is a lesson that EPA has not learned.

There is a 60-day window for PLF to challenge the denial in court.

Comments

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The authority that the EPA MUST use in an effort to regulate CO2 is under the Clean Air Act. That act is very specific in the triggers, and the parameters that specify what the EPA must do with ANY pollutant that it deems qualified for "Endangerment" status. That's where the walls begin to close-in on the EPA, here's how it's gonna play out...

The EPA’s efforts to regulate CO2 under what they are calling the "Tailoring Rule" so as to shuft UPWARD the Threshold trigger for CO2 to 25,000 tons/year, this proposed change will be subject to a powerful legal challenge. Under the Clean Air Act, the threshold action levels for criteria pollutants is 250 tons per year, NO Exceptions--that limit will subject virtually every medium business, and most small business even some upper-income families & individuals to the harsh sanctions under the Clean Air Act.

The EPA concedes that without this Tailoring Rule, these lower thresholds would take effect automatically for CO2 with the adoption of any EPA rule that controls or limits CO2, such as the proposed CAFÉ standards. But EPA says that regulating CO2 at that level would be logistically impossible. EPA’s Tailoring Rule would likely be challenged as an "ultra vires" (beyond the scope of powers) attempt to usurp the legislature on this issue, in effect an argument that EPA doesn’t have the power to decide that the legislatively-enacted 250 ton per year level are not appropriate for CO2.

The fact that the EPA must attempt an INCREASE of the threshold limit for CO2 by 100 times, goes to point on the absurdity of their widening of the definition of an Endangerment Pollutant to a ridiculous level. The increasingly tenacious Global Warming concensus the EPA uses as a justification for this effort, actually masquerades it's governmental/regulatory end-game...The sequestering of more than just our Carbon Foot-Print making this effort a threat, and a genuine ENDANGERMENT of our Liberty...I urge my fellow Americans to speak-up and let our elected leaders know that they have gone too far, when they abuse the environmental protection process, as a method to advance their socio-political Collectivism.