EPA: No New Regs for Greenhouse Gases

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce today that it will not issue new regulations for greenhouse gas em missions this year, delaying action on the issue until the next Administration takes office. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, or provide a good reason for not regulating it. The EPA argued that it did not have the authority under the act to regulate carbon dioxide partly because the gas is a ubiquitous substance, and not simply a product of emissions from factories and power plants.

The EPA denied that it is dragging its feet on the regulations, saying that regulating is, "a long process."

"You don't just wake up one day and say, 'Here's the decision.' It's a long process with lots of thought, lots of analysis and lots of research that gets you to that decision point. We're going to be more transparent than we've been, laying it all out and saying, 'How should we do this?'"

But some inside the agency tell the Washington Post a story of a series of moves by the Administration to deliberately delay new regulations, including editing congressional testimony, changing official agency policy, and burying reports from career professionals in the agency. In effect, putting a bureaucratic lockdown on the process. "They argued that this increase in regulation should be on the next president's record," an unnamed official told the Post.

Part of the debate revolves around whether the agency should declare global warming to be harmful to human health and welfare. Making such a declaration would require the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide, potentially adding billions of dollars in regulatory costs for auto makers, utilities, and industrial producers. That drew criticism from Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), Chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

"If this administration spent the same effort fighting global warming as they do editing and censoring global warming documents, the planet might not be in such dire straits."

But it is far from certain that U.S. action alone would do anything to significantly impact global warming, if it is indeed caused by human activities. And the sheer magnitude of the changes required in the U.S. economy to fight greenhouse gases argue for a slower approach to developing regulations meant to control em missions of carbon dioxide. The delays inherent in government rule-making, the timing of the Court's decision so late in the Bush Administration's term, as well as the complexity of the task, have all combined to slow the process. Ultimately, that may be a good thing.