I’m not disputing (1). The Environmental Protection Agency has been given a broad mandate to protect endangered species, (2). If sea ice disappears from the Arctic, polar bears will be in grave danger of extinction, and (3). The warming is probably due to human CO2 emission. But good grief, the CO2 content of the atmosphere is a global phenomenon. What could the US do about it single-handedly? By what measures?
The US can sign the damn Kyoto protocol and start reducing carbon admissions across the country!
Basically, we’d have to cut carbon admission drastically at first then lesson it over time to a manageable level. This is very important and it’s imperative that we do it sooner than later.
Cutting auto emissions, fossil fuel plant emissions standards need to be slashed, invest heavily in alternative energy sources like wind farming off our coasts, and possibly some large scale hydrodyanamic facilities at key locations like the chessapeak bay, san fran to name a few. There’s lot’s of things we can do with the right amount of money…
To answer your topic question, it would be a major uphill battle, at a minimum, for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases to save polar bears. EPA’s legislative authority and area of concern is within the US, so to the extent that polar bears living in US-controlled territory or waters were endangered, then EPA has the authority to act. In short, EPA can only act to save American polar bears, which are clearly the most important kind. Those Euro and Commie polar bears are on their own 
.
Second, the Endangered Species Act does not have provisions for regulation of emissions. It essentially provides the mechanism by which species are listed as endangered (and with other provisions for helping these species grow in numbre). The actual protection mechanisms typically come through the implementation of Environmental Impact Statements and so on, but those are used only when a company or government wants to do something in an endangered species habitat. The ESA can’t be used to require emission reductions, at least not directly.
In order to regulate greenhouse gases, EPA would rely on the Clean Air Act, and would be required to demonstrate that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are causing global warming and hence, the loss of Arctic ice. If EPA demonstrates this for the purpose of saving polar bears, then it has essentially demonstrated this for all other purposes, and the regulation of CO2 is thereby required for all sources.
Given the fact that EPA is pretty much told what to do by the White House (being part of the Executive Branch), the likelihood of this happening before January 21, 2009 is slim to none.
With respect to the second part of the question, about the global nature of CO2, that is to some extent a trickier one. However, last year’s Supreme Court decision (Massachusetts v. EPA) pretty much said that international action or inaction was irrelevant under the existing law (the Clean Air Act). EPA had to demonstrate using the latest science whether or not CO2 was causing global warming or not, and if EPA determined that CO2 does in fact cause or contribute to global warming, EPA then has a legal obligation under the CAA to regulate.
My guess - continued hemming and hawing until the aforementioned date in January of next year.
Since most of the world’s other industrialized countries are interested in global agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with the U.S. and Australia as major blockers of such agreements, then the U.S. throwing its diplomatic weight behind the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is the obvious first step.
Basically - what Phlosphr said.
Public Animal No. 9 (great name BTW ) has also made a good point that the Endangered Species Act is unlikely to be an effective measure to limit emissions since it is much more designed to set aside habitat or to stop a specific project (like a road or housing development) than to regulate emissions nationwide, which is what the Clean Air Act is for.
Given that there’s nothing stopping anyone from doing anything independantly, and that said countries have repeatedly ignored their treaty obligations int he pst, whereas the U.S. has actually worked hard to increase efficiency and improve emissions, I submit the entire idea that the U.S. is the problem is nonsense.
What?
The U.S. produces more carbon emissions than the next 5 highest emission-producing nations combined. Do you seriously think the U.S. isn’t a major part of the problem?
Cite?
Mosier is incorrect, at least currently, but our per capita emissions are still extremely high, as noted in my cite above.
We did sign the protocol.
You do know that the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification by the Senate, and that without such ratification in our system it remains unbinding, right? And that the reason for this is that a resolution passed by the Senate concurrent with the protocol indicated that the protocol not only would be defeated - it wouldn’t get a single vote from a senator of either party.
Now - as to the other matter, it is possible without an agreement to cut carbon emissions - they were down 1.3% in 2006. It is similarly possible to be a signatory and have your emissions rise or miss your targets - our neighbors to the north recently admitted that there was no chance they’d meet their Kyoto goals.
Don’t pretend this is as simple as signing agreements and buying Priuses. If this was easy, it probably would have been done already.
Assuming for the sake of argument that there is an anticipated link between CO2 emissions and polar bear endangerment (which I dispute), then what matters, in my opinion, is gross CO2 emission not per capital CO2 emission. (I am also assuming that by “carbon” emissions, people are referring to CO2.)
Apparently China is about to surpass the U.S. in CO2 emissions, if it hasn’t done so already. This is a serious problem for anyone who believes that U.S. regulation could accomplish something in this area.
Not only possible, probable; I don’t know that anybody has fully met them.
In actual fact, emissions in signatory countries are rising much faster than those in the US.
I understand that Kyoto doesn’t even put any emissions limits on countries like China and India. I would guess that accounts in large part for the disparity.
Can you produce a cite to back that up?
As for the OP, I doubt that the Endangered Species Act could be used to force industry to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. We’d probably need a pretty comprehensive piece of new legislation to make that happen.
A question for anyone who knows: Do either Clinton or Obama favor bringing the US under the next round of Kyoto Protocols?
That certainly would suggest something about the treaty, then, wouldn’t it?
It would not, however, explain why the US is doing a better job of reducing emissions than Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Canada, Holland, Italy, Japan, Ireland, Luxembourg …
I’d be more interested in seeing a cite that shows the Kyoto Protocol puts any emissions limit on Non-Annex I countries.
When Kyoto was drafted, it divided the world into two countries. Annex I countries and Non-Annex I countries. Annex I countries is a term more or less synonymous with “developed countries” or “first world” countries. Think: Western Europe, United States, Japan, Canada, Australia et cetera.
Non-Annex I countries is more or less synonymous with “developing countries” like India, China, et cetera.
The Protocol clearly does not require any emissions reductions by Non-Annex I countries. The parties which signed developed the Protocol worked with the assumptions that most of the greenhouse gas emissions were coming from Annex I countries (true at the time), that per capita greenhouse gas emissions from Non-Annex I countries was very low compared to Annex I countries (true at the time) and that Non-Annex I countries would by necessity have to increase their greenhouse gas emissions in order to progress to the status of “developed” countries (also true.)
The problem is China and India have been developing quite quickly, and it is now reaching the point where China and India are putting out more greenhouse gas emissions than I believe the developers of the Kyoto Protocol imagined would happen at this date. (There are conflicting reports that China may have already surpassed the United States in greenhouse gas emissions.)
It’s a complex issue though, India and China both have very large populations. So while they are both putting out ever-increasing GHG emissions they still have a relatively low per capita emission rate (at least that is my understanding.)
I agree that something needs to be done about India and China in the next form of Kyoto. Primarily, because we can’t allow India and China to get to a per capita emission rate that was seen by some Annex I countries in the 1990s, the global environment can’t handle that. China and India are just too big for that to be an acceptable situation.
On the other hand, I’m not sure why China and India’s being exempt is reason for us to not try and regulate our own emissions. The United States has a global leadership responsibility, and while I think the United States should work very hard to do something about China and India–at the same time it does not make sense for us to not be implementing procedures to control our own emissions.
However, I do think it is worth mentioning that the United States has done a good bit to reduce emissions over the past decades, something that is often overlooked by people trying to bash the United States for not signing the Kyoto Protocol. The KP was probably politically impossible, and probably remains politically impossible (a 95-0 vote saying “don’t send this to us for ratification” from the Senate is damning–remember treaties need 2/3s support from the Senate not just the simple majority common for normal legislation.)
Right now I’d say the ideal course would be for the United States to remain a symbolic signatory to the KP without trying to ratify it (this would just be a long and impossible political battle serving no purpose–the ultimate result would be a rejection by the U.S. Senate.) At the same time, the U.S. should project more of an image of an emissions controller, while we may not be able to ratify Kyoto for political reasons we can do even more to control our emissions and to work with the rest of the world–if for no reason other than it builds good will for us that will help us become a leader in controlling global emissions.
The solution for India and China is not a simple one, these are developing economies that are starting to realize unimagined standards of living increases. By and large I feel that Indians and Chinese deserve a quality of life equivalent to that enjoyed by us in the developed world. Just because we reached “developed” status before them doesn’t mean we have a right to tell them “sorry, the club’s full.” So while I think we need to try and find a way to help China and India develop in a manner that is environmentally sustainable, we have to also realize the purpose of controlling GHG–it is to ostensibly keep quality of life high. We have to find a way to satisfy our environmental concerns without keeping the quality of life of developing countries stationary (plus, India and China are big boys and are going to increase their quality of life whether we want them to or not–so any solution that got in the way of their development would just be rejected by them.)
Is Wikipedia good enough for you?
I suspect that part of it depends on where you draw the baseline. The U.S. economy was hitting a huge boom back in ‘97. If those other countries’ economies were still a little sluggish back then, it would explain part of the disparity. That’s purely a guess though.
Not that it really matters. Kyoto is silly. (Not the city – the treaty.)
A nice dream. But given that the US is already outperforming many of the countries that are criticizing it, it seems unlikely that further outperformance is going to make everyone happy.
Do you really think that if the US drops another percent next year, while Canada, say, continues to rise, Greenpeace et al. are going to start making noise about how Canada has to live up to the US’ example? And that Canada will be chastened and repent?
Cutting pollution is an important and worthwhile goal that everyone everywhere should support, and the US should reduce pollution no matter what anyone else does. The focus on the signatures rather than on actual results, however, suggests that there’s more going on than pure concern for the environment. For many, the real importance of Kyoto lies not in actually reducing emissions, but in getting the US to bow to the authority of the “international community.”
Did you even read the link DMC provided? China is still nowhere even close to the USA in terms of carbon emissions.