A bipartisan group of senators is supporting a resolution to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases.
The resolution, sponsored by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and 40 other senators, would throw out the endangerment finding on greenhouse gases and halt new EPA regulations set to take effect next year. A motion to proceed to the resolution failed 47-53.
Allowing any federal agency to unilaterally move forward on issues of this magnitude not only allows politics to drive policy decisions; it locks out the voices of ... Americans and their elected representatives in Congress.
Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said.
Such an important debate as climate change, and the potential to drive up costs on consumers and small businesses, should not be left in the hands of Washington, D.C., bureaucrats. I strongly oppose this action by the EPA and was therefore an original cosponsor and strong supporter of the Murkowski resolution. I am disappointed that the motion to proceed to the resolution failed, but we will continue fighting to make sure that the American people are heard.
Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho) argues:
The EPA rule is nothing more than another power grab by a federal agency and an erosion of the Constitution of this great country. It would lead to a massive tax on every aspect of American life from the ringing alarm clock in the morning to the last light switch turned off at night and it would be levied by bureaucrats who are not held accountable to the voice of the people. The merits of global warming and how to address it should be debated in the legislative bodies of Congress, not decided by an unelected bureaucratic agency of the federal government.
Passed in 1970 and revised in 1990, the Clean Air Act gave EPA the authority to regulate air pollutants. The resolutions supporters argue that the EPA's recent declaration of carbon dioxide to be a pollutant creates in itself far-reaching power never intended by Congress under the act.
On the flip side, Ronnie D. Lankford, author of Greenhouse Gases (At Issue Series) contends that in addition to helping slow the impacts of climate change, EPA regulations also help reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil, cut costs for American consumers, and reduce other pollutants that have a more immediate impact on public health and the environment, including nitrogen oxides, which form ozone, and sulfur dioxide, which forms soot particles. Both ozone and particle pollution are known factors in the growing rates of heart and lung disease.
Trip Pollard, who served on the Virginia Climate Change Commission in 2008, said:
The federal government has taken historic action to cut pollution from our cars and trucks, one of the largest sources of dirty air. The changes under this rule will bring multiple benefits – to our wallets and our health, the environment, and national security.
Pollard says that it is troubling when elected leaders seek to thwart this progress.
According to the Southern Environmental Law Center:
The benefits of reducing greenhouse emissions are especially important in the South where some 20 million people live in areas that fail to meet health-based air pollution standards, due in large part to tailpipe pollution. In addition, Southerners have some of the longest drive times in the country, so increasing fuel efficiency will save money at the gas pump for consumers. It would also reduce America’s demand for oil, demonstrating that there are better ways to meet our energy needs than risky efforts that promise little return, such as the expansion of offshore drilling into undeveloped areas off the U.S. coast.
Taking positive steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will also help protect the South’s coastline, which is extremely vulnerable to potential sea-level rise due to a warming planet over time. EPA has determined that storm surges and flooding in coastal areas from sea level rise are among the most serious potential adverse effects of climate change in the U.S., and that up to 21 percent of the remaining coastal wetlands in the mid-Atlantic are at risk of inundation by 2100.
Following a 2007 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation jointly issued a final rule on curbing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from light-duty vehicles, which contribute about one-fourth of America’s share of the world’s climate-change pollution:
The evidence points ineluctably to the conclusion that climate change is upon us as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, that climatic changes are already occurring that harm our health and welfare, and that the effects will only worsen over time in the absence of regulatory action. The effects of climate change on public health include sickness and death.