By Jeffrey Ball and Charles Forelle
Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant.
An “endangerment” finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions — even if Congress doesn’t pass pending climate-change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any global deal inked in the Danish capital, where no binding agreement is expected.
Many business groups are opposed to EPA efforts to curb a gas as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide.
An EPA endangerment finding “could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement. “The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don’t stifle our economic recovery,” he said, noting that the group supports federal legislation.
EPA action won’t do much to combat climate change, and “is certain to come at a huge cost to the economy,” said the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group that stands as a proxy for U.S. industry.
Dan Riedinger, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a power-industry trade group, said the EPA would be less likely than Congress to come up with an “economywide approach” to regulating emissions. The power industry prefers such an approach because it would spread the burden of emission cuts to other industries as well.
Electricity generation, transportation and industry represent the three largest sources of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.
An EPA spokeswoman declined to comment Sunday on when the agency might finalize its proposed endangerment finding. Congressional Republicans have called on the EPA to withdraw it, saying recently disclosed emails written by scientists at the Climatic Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia and their peers call into question the scientific rationale for regulation.
The spokeswoman said that the EPA is confident the basis for its decision will be “very strong,” and that when it is published, “we invite the public to review the extensive scientific analysis informing” the decision.
EPA action would give President Barack Obama something to show leaders from other nations when he attends the Copenhagen conference on Dec. 18 and tries to persuade them that the U.S. is serious about cutting its contribution to global greenhouse-gas emissions.
The vast majority of increased greenhouse-gas emissions is expected to come from developing countries such as China and India, not from rich countries like the U.S. But developing countries have made it clear that their willingness to reduce growth in emissions will depend on what rich countries do first. That puts a geopolitical spotlight on the U.S.
At the heart of the fight over whether U.S. emission constraints should come from the EPA or Congress is a high-stakes issue: which industries will have to foot the bill for a climate cleanup. A similar theme will play out in Copenhagen as rich countries wrangle over how much they should have to pay to help the developing world shift to cleaner technologies.
“There is no agreement without money,” says Rosário Bento Pais, a top climate negotiator for the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm. “That is clear.”
An endangerment finding would allow the EPA to use the federal Clean Air Act to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions, which are produced whenever fossil fuel is burned. Under that law, the EPA could require emitters of as little as 250 tons of carbon dioxide per year to install new technology to curb their emissions starting as soon as 2012.
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The administration’s objectives are clear. Just like Bush, Obama is trying to micro-manage a demolition of the economy to implement the same “austerity measures” and “structural adjustment” programs which have been applied throughout the developing world. It’s the Shock Doctrine, only it’s being done to the US in a more obvious way than it was prior to Bush even. Now that Wall Street is no longer in danger, Obama can slip into Reagan-mode and “starve the beast”, in other words, twiddle-his-thumbs while revenue-depleted states raffle-off public lands, resources, parks and other assets at firesale prices to private industry. Meanwhile, wages will begin to tumble sometime in 2010 and the grim signs of deflation will reappear.
Obama will undoubtedly wave the bloody shirt of “rising deficits” to quell the Liberal mutiny, but it won’t stop the midterm election bloodbath that’s now seems unavoidable for the Dems. High unemployment means an early end to Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. The Dems have followed their blinkered leader off the cliff. But either way Big Business and the Banks win in the end, and the plan to strip Americans of all their assets will eventually become a reality, unless the People revolt.
the global climate org. want money from richer nations to pay the frieght of their beliefs. let them go after the european nations which extracted riches and resourses from africa. india . pay baqck the gold ,diamonds, alloys which they stole from these nations and they would not have to be asking the u.s. to help foot the bill. they did the damage so let them be responsible for the bailout and not be asking the u.s.
they caused the problem and should only be responsible and no one else. these nations would have enough to correct the problem if the resouces were not stolen from them. seams europe causes many problems and then shifts the blame on everyone else.
Gentlemen, look at your elected officials. We would not be in this quagmire without their consent. You elected them, not I. Look in a mirror.
Aww, Paul the Innocent. That’s so cute. Did you for for Bush the King? If so, methinks are not so innocent after all.
Give us your true thoughts, not the script from others.