This is good news.
WASHINGTON - Having received White House backing, the Environmental Protection Agency declared Friday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a significant threat to human health and thus will be listed as pollutants under the Clean Air Act — a policy the Bush administration rejected.
The move could allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases, but it's more likely that the Obama administration will use the action to prod Congress to pass regulations around a system to cap and then trade emissions so that they are gradually lowered.
msnbc
More, after the fold.
The authority to combat global warming by regulatory action comes from the Clean Air Act, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court:
April 2, 2007
In a defeat for the Bush administration, the US Supreme Court ruled Monday that greenhouse gases are a pollutant and ordered federal environmental officials to re-examine their refusal to limit emissions of the gases from cars and trucks.
The justices' 5-4 decision did not go as far as to require the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Rather, the court directed the agency to take a new look at the gases. If it determines they cause global warming and therefore human harm, the agency should regulate them under the federal Clean Air Act, or provide a reasonable explanation why it will not, the court said.
Supreme Court rules greenhouse gases a pollutant
This is an important move by the Obama administration because Republicans and the Democratic turncoats allied with them have threatened to filibuster any cap and trade bill addressing global warming.
Indeed, many Democratic senators voted to keep a cap and trade bill out of the budget reconciliation process, and subject to a filibuster:
On April 1, 26 Democratic senators broke with the majority of their colleagues and both the party's Senate leaders to join all 41 Republicans voting for an amendment to the annual budget resolution forbidding use of the budget reconciliation process to pass climate change legislation involving a cap-and-trade system.
In effect, the amendment ensures approval of a cap-and-trade system will require a minimum of 60 votes rather than a simple majority of 50 in the 100-member chamber. Since Democratic leaders do not currently have anywhere like that number of votes for the measure, and little time to build popular support, it is going nowhere in the near term.
Reuters
President Obama's response, through the EPA, is that if the Senate won't address global warming, EPA will.
This kind of hardball is needed to save our planet.
Tell President Obama and the EPA, thanks.