Troy Media – By Dr. Stephen Murgatroyd
US President Barack Obama this week fired the first arrow in his arsenal to appear to be combating climate change. On December 7, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reaffirmed its intention to regulate CO2 emissions and indicated that it has finalized an endangerment finding – that is, it has recognized CO2 as detrimental to health and the environment. Its reached its decision, coincidentally reached the same week as the opening of the Copenhagen summit, following consultations it has been holding since August, after the US Supreme Court established CO2 as a pollutant.
Legal challenges coming
The EPA’s reaffirmation allows the President to implement regulations without the need of a new bill in Congress. However, the regulations are likely to face legal challenges, especially since Climategate – the infamous and controversial emails and documents hacked from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia – raises questions about the evidence on which the EPA’s endangerment finding is based.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, based in Washington, DC, has already announced that it will file suit in federal court to overturn the endangerment finding on the grounds that the EPA has ignored major scientific issues, including but not limited to those raised in the Climategate scandal.
Business is already reacting to the prospect of tough new regulation with negative comments. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement that “the devil will be in the details” and he cautioned that care was needed to ensure “we don’t stifle our economic recovery.”
Copenhagen summiteers, however, were ecstatic. The EPA decision was seen as a strong indication of the President’s commitment to reducing emissions, with or without the support of the Senate and, by extension, the people.
Under the EPA regulations, the White House could require the labelling of all products showing their carbon footprint, introduce emissions controls and penalties – a carbon tax – and regulate production processes so as to reduce the amount of pollutants involved in the process.
What the EPA is not able to do is to create a carbon trading scheme, which would require new regulations.
Using regulation rather than new legislation makes it difficult for Canada to copy the US, which is the basis of Canada’s environment policy. Just how policy harmonization will now occur, especially when each province has its own legislation, will be interesting to observe. No clues were offered in the announcement yesterday as to just what the EPA intends to actually do.
Speculation in the media, however, is rife, with one newspaper suggesting that all new construction and all furnaces and energy generation systems would need to receive permits. One even went as far as to suggest that breathing may well be taxed.
Robert Gibbs, the President’s media spokesman, acknowledged the development but suggested that Obama is still seeking legislative powers to regulate CO2and develop a market for carbon. The President sees such mechanism as a major device for lowering emissions, despite the fact that it has singularly failed to do so after several years of use in the European Union, where emissions have increased by 13 per cent since cap and trade was introduced.
Back door protectionism
The obvious observation is that this is another stumbling development on the US’s journey to a climate change policy. The endangerment finding is a backstop pending legislation, but is a development that could regulate CO2 emissions if the courts continue to support the endangerment finding.
The EPA regulatory regime is not, however, a substitute for a comprehensive approach to climate change, which is what the US President is committed to. So far he has committed to a three per cent reduction on 1990 emissions by 2020 – some 27 per cent below the suggested target for the US by the scientific advisors he appointed. He has committed to introducing a cap and trade system and border tariffs on good imported to the US which do not meet the carbon emission standards set by Congress, still to be defined, and which many fear is a backdoor attempt at trade protectionism.
He needs legislation to turn these commitments into action, legislation which is bogged down in the Senate, with both Republicans and Democrats fighting against it. The EPA decision should be seen as a signal that the President will do whatever it takes to get some legislation on the books in 2010.
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