Stopping Greenhouse Gases: The Need for EPA Authority

Stopping climate change and reversing global warming is an urgent health necessity. To accomplish that tough but vital goal, we need to use all the tools and opportunities available to us.

One tool is the Clean Air Act, which gives the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to regulate air pollutants in order to protect human health.  In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must also regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants.

In December 2009, EPA completed the first step to make that possible:  It issued a formal determination that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations.  This “endangerment finding” opens the way for the EPA to take concrete steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

However, as the EPA gears up to take effective action, it faces a series of challenges from members of Congress, many of them from coal- and oil-producing states. 

• In June 2010, the U.S. Senate defeated a resolution introduced by Sen. Murkowski, R-Alaska, which would have tied the EPA’s hands to control carbon pollution.  By rejecting this resolution, the majority of the Senate voted to base U.S. climate policy on the scientific evidence that climate change is real, that human activity is a major driver of carbon pollution, and that urgent action is needed to protect human health and the environment.
• In July 2010, Sen. Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, introduced a bill that would block any work by the EPA under the Clean Air Act to set standards to curb global warming pollution from power plants and other industrial sources for at least two years.  Calling that bill a “stop-work order” for the EPA, PSR and three dozen other organizations are calling on the Senate to oppose the Rockefeller bill.