Senator Henry Waxman recently put out an interesting report on the Bush EPA’s response to CO[sub]2[/sub] and global warming. It’s too convoluted to bear summarizing, but anyone interested can read it here.
I thought I’d pop back in, although now that my vacation has ended I’m running shorter on time to post more detailed explanations (plus writing more lesbian erotica takes serious concentration and study)
I think, but am not certain, that that is the key - that it is legitimately not considered a pollutant in the regulatory sense of the CAA. I believe this issue came up as well in the latter half of the Clinton Administration with respect to mercury emissions, where the Clinton Administration EPA attempted to much more strictly regulate mercury along with several other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). At the time, they only focused on the multipathway exposures for mercury, radionuclides, arsenic, cadmium, lead, and dioxins (just 6 types of the 188 HAPs listed in the CAA). They did this under the authority of Section 112(n)(1)(A) and 112© of the CAA. Quoting from their “Regulatory Finding on the Emissions of Hazardous Air Pollutants from Electric Utility Steam Generating Units”, they did so:
These actions taking place over the period culminating in the EPA’s February 1998 “Study of Hazardous Air Pollutant Emissions from Electric Utility Steam Generating Units–Final Report to Congress”, wherein they did not address CO2. I believe that the discovery was that the language of the CAA with respect to HAPs was such that an inclusion of CO2 would not survive the first challenge in court, and may have an injunction against it right from the start (I think the case involved fears not that the power industry would protest, but chloralkali plants would do so).
That is, I think that first the EPA would actually have to classify CO2 as a HAP, and then find that they had to regulate it for the purpose of preventing a “clear clinical increased relative risk” (a term from an e-mail I from my lawyer this morning) to human, animal, and/or plant life and health. (for a representative list of HAPs, see this link: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/combust/utiltox/allhap.xls ) However, I could be wrong if there is a provision which allows regulation without hazardous classification, which I do not think there is. It is important to note that even CO (carbon monoxide) is not yet classified a HAP, nor is it regulated at power plants by the EPA, even though excess CO emissions could be far more hazardous to local human health – most especially that of the workers at the plant.
I think the debate would have to turn to “is CO2 a HAP as defined under the CAA and its Amendments”? Or perhaps to “is a threat to climate enough to qualify CO2 as a HAP”? Myself, I think it needs some level of regulation, but I am wary of categorizing it as a HAP to do so.
Otherwise, from the NY Times article you quoted:
I would have to see by what authority exactly Mr. Cannon claims the EPA can do this. There certainly was far more than ample time to make an Administrative Action in the 8 years in which the Clinton Administration EPA was in charge, and they did nothing of the sort during his time with them, so I suspect that there may have been just a wee bit more to it than Mr. Cannon is letting on. It’s possible he was quoted out of context by the paper.
I wonder if perhaps one issue now is that it is considered likely that (hopefully) CO2 reduction legislation of some sort will occur, and that an EPA re-classification of CO2 as a HAP may be a moot point by the time potentially tens of millions of dollars are spent drafting enforcement plans, monitoring plans, updates to CEMS and Part 60 and Part 70, and so forth. This may appear as “foot dragging” on the issue on the part of the BA, and in truth it is not impossible that it may be. A legitimate point one may make is “the Bush Administration is not likely to even try under the current CAA legislation”, but another defense could simply be that they don’t want the EPA to be empowered under that general provision of the CAA, and would rather have defined regulatory limits coupled with a “game plan” towards enforcement and monitoring. It could also be due, one may argue, to improper industry and business influence. That’s not something I feel I’d like to debate, as proving “improper” influence, or even “influence” is very difficult to do even when it looks clear.
Re: Bum advice of the States – Nobody says that they have to be getting bum advice. Well, I’m not anyways. With every case there is one winner and one loser, one person who is right and one who is wrong. Throughout history there have been numerous actions carried out by States for primarily political purposes, motivated by the fact that they have essentially unlimited tax dollars to spend on legal matters. There have also been numerous actions carried out by States due to legitimate concerns for the health and welfare of their constituents and to try to make a better future for people’s respective children. State environmental heads are people too, and I’ve met more than a couple of them personally. They feel that they have a case, and that the revisions to the NSR on plant maintenance items are wrong. My primary argument has been and remains that whether it is “right” or “wrong”, it is not an environmental catastrophe or a “free license to pollute” or any of the other dishonest absurdisms I pointed out earlier. And, to be fair and honest, I do not see the revisions as being improper or out of line, but I did agree that a trade-off of increased emissions restrictions of some sort seems fair from a standpoint of future legislation. If the States feel that this is indeed a monstrously bad thing, then I would hope that they would be required to at least show in factual detail the expected, best-case, and worst-case differential emissions scenarios resulting from non-reclassification of potential capacity increases as NSR-eligible sources. I can give an estimate on that myself, but it would not be of much value unless I was to write an entire report and publish it, which I’m not going to do.
Re: Rush Limbaugh - his opinion means nothing to me, and I’ll say that his statement is as much misleading and scientifically dishonest as most things I’ve read that have bothered me. The difference is that people know that Limbaugh is an extremely biased source with a very clear political agenda and a penchant for twisting facts to score political points, whereas a news article in the Independent is not clear that it has bias and/or an agenda unless one knows all the details involved.
I’ve tried typing this whilst at work between lunch and meetings, and it’s possible I misquoted myself or mis-phrased something. If so, forgiveness, please.
Anthracite, I have no great disagreements with what you wrote, just a few small points.
Well, as the NY Times article notes, the Clinton Administration determined that CO2 could be regulated if the EPA found it could reasonably be expected to harm human welfare and they noted that “climate” was listed as an aspect of human welfare. I don’t know if this is the same thing as classifying CO2 as a HAP or whether it would be a different classification.
It is true I think that the Clinton Administration was not so great on this issue. They seemed somewhat sympathetic but unwilling to expend political capital on it. On the other hand, it is also true that a lot has happened to change the landscape in the last few years: The IPCC has issued its Third Assessment Report which is more definitive in stating that they believe we are already seeing the effects of anthrogenic warming. And, much of the rest of the world has signed on to Kyoto which looks likely to come into force…assuming that Russia does ratify it.
Well, while it may be true that the Bush Administration may be leery about empowering EPA in this way, I think you have to recognize that we have other evidence of where Bush stands on climate change. I.e., we have his voluntary program of emissions reductions whose “ambitious yet achievable” goal is to essentially continue following the same downward trend line in greenhouse gas emissions intensity defined by emissions per unit GDP. (Whether the goal falls essentially exactly on the trend line or deviates a teeny bit down from the trend line depends on exactly which window of years you use to establish the trend.) I also haven’t heard any Administration support for the McCain-Lieberman bill. And, then there is Bush’s own frankly nasty and dismissive “Yes, I read the report prepared by the bureaucracy” quote concerning the EPA’s report on climate change under his administration. And, there’s the whole controversy surrounding the changes the White House wanted in the discussion on climate change in the EPA’s report assessing the environment in general (and how that eventually led to discussion of the subject being left out entirely because the EPA’s scientists apparently said it was more honest to say nothing at all than to say what the White House wanted them to say).
I think the position of the Administration on the climate change issue is pretty clear even if the whole dynamics of how this is occurring and who is influencing what may be more nebulous.
Well, yes, I agree that this is a realm of speculation. But, hey, that won’t stop me from throwing out my admittedly unprovable opinions on this. I think it is a combination of industry influence and general political philosophy. If you look at the major libertarian-conservative (as opposed to religious-conservative) think-tanks like Cato, NCPA, Competitive Enterprise Institute, …, they all have this as a major one of their issues. So, I think that Bush would be alienating his philosophical base if he took or supported any real action on climate change. Of course, these libertarian-right groups get considerable industry funding (to the extent that their funding sources can be determined…These organizations often tend to be pretty tight-lipped on this) so the distinction betwen philosophy and industry-influence gets kind of blurry.