CO2 Endangerment Finding Aims to Push Congress on Climate Bill

Sources called the EPA endangerment finding for CO2 emissions a move primarily timed to increase U.S. leverage at the Copenhagen talks but secondarily aimed at prompting Congress to pass a climate change bill, Greenwire reported.

While EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson dismissed Republican claims that the recent climate change e-mail scandal undercut the basis for regulating the emissions, Democrats called the EPA finding a strong signal for Congress to pass a bill. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., warned that if EPA were to regulate CO2, bill opponents "would later come running to Congress to secure the kinds of incentives we can pass today."

Southern Co. Chairman, President and CEO David Ratcliffe noted that "a carbon bill would give more clarity to what you need to do and when." American Electric Power Chairman, President and CEO Mike Morris was quoted by the Washington Post as saying about the finding: "'we have been a proponent . . . to a congressional approach to this undertaking. This is the most awkward way we could go about it.' The EPA had to comply with direction from the courts, but 'there are better approaches, more cost-effective approaches and more productive approaches.'"

EEI spokesman Dan Riedinger added: "Most people's strong preference is for Congress to cross that finish line first, establish a workable cap-and-trade program because it will be much more cost-effective, much more easy to implement than regulations under the Clean Air Act."

And just hours after EPA issued its decision, the Competitive Enterprise Institute said it would go to federal court to sue the Obama administration. CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman was quoted by E&E News PM as saying: "EPA is clinging for dear life to the notion that the global climate models are holding up. In reality, those models are about to sink under the growing weight of evidence that they are fabrications."

- Related stories also appeared in the Associated Press via the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, Dow Jones Newswires, and Wall Street Journal.