When Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski proposed a change in how the Clean Air Act is administered, I was shocked but not surprised. See The Reaction from January. Thankfully, her resolution was defeated in the US Senate yesterday. This was an attempt at a radical reconfiguring of how environmental law has been practiced in this country for 40 years. It was an attempt to overturn what the Supreme Court had mandated the EPA must determine: whether or not the public health was “endangered” by a particular air pollutant, in this case the class of pollutants known as greenhouse gases. I was saddened, however, by the extent of the support Murkowski’s resolution did receive.
The EPA announced in March of 2009 that it would seek an “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases under existing Clean Air Act regulations. They finalized this in December. What does it mean? It means the US can – and indeed legally must – act to protect public health by curtailing greenhouse gases. “The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases-carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)-in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” This section of the EPA’s website is devoted to the legal and regulatory history, the rationales for the finding, and the enormous volume of commentary on the finding and the EPA’s exhaustive response.
It is sad, for one thing, to think that so many elected officials will leave their consciences inside the meeting rooms of their caucus. It is lamentable that Republican Senators like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and some others, like George Voinovich of Ohio and Richard Lugar of Indiana, knowing what they know about the threat of climate change, should kowtow so to their leadership. (See yesterday’s post about American public opinion on climate change.)
Dick Lugar, for instance, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, appears to feel as if he can blithely ignore the conclusions of the recently published National Security Strategy: “The danger from climate change is real, urgent, and severe. The change wrought by a warming planet will lead to new conflicts over refugees and resources; new suffering from drought and famine; catastrophic natural disasters; and the degradation of land across the globe.”
Beyond the political cowardice of these Senators, consider how others display a flagrant disregard for the wellbeing of their constituents. After Katrina and Ike, and now the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe, how can any representative from the Gulf Coast states ignore the manifest dangers of both climate change and fossil fuel extraction. It defies reason to think that business as usual is what these Senators endorse. It beggars the imagination that people in the Gulf states will allow their votes to go unremarked.
Here is the scorecard: Of the ten Senators from the Gulf Coast, one voted against the resolution, Bill Nelson of Florida.
On another note, the good folks at Baker & McKenzie issued an analysis today on the aftermath of Murkowski’s failed resolution. “Senate leadership now hopes to move more comprehensive legislative packages on energy and climate to the Senate floor, including possibly the APA, or select parts of the APA in combination with other proposals. Whether or not EPA action will be preempted by further Senate action will depend on whether any measure passed in the Senate is deemed a sufficient alternative to EPA regulation by both houses of Congress and the President.”
I want to also note here a particularly eloquent and lucid column today from Philip Stephens at the FT. He remind us that there are “…unavoidable links between oil spills, climate change and sustainable economic growth.” He reminds us of our responsibility, as indeed President Obama does in the National Security Strategy when he writes: “…there is no effective solution to climate change that does not depend upon all nations taking responsibility for their own actions and for the planet we will leave behind.” A big part of that responsibility lies in our fossil fuel use. Stephens writes: “Mr. Obama says in the National Security Strategy that the US must exercise leadership by example. Well, reducing US oil consumption would mean less deep-sea drilling, and less risk of another blow-out; it would encourage other governments to take global warming seriously and help to slow the rise in the earth’s temperature.”
If we don’t take responsibility, all of us: Presidents, Senators and the general public – you and me! – then we’ll be doing more than just shooting ourselves in the foot, as indicated by the FT.
