The Washington Post, in an editorial, noted EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's speech at the United Nations-sponsored Copenhagen climate change summit. The Post wrote that critics "are correct to point out that EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act isn't the most efficient way to clamp down on carbon emissions, absent broader congressional action." However, the EPA endangerment ruling on GHGs "pressures lawmakers to offer a better alternative to EPA regulation alone. The threat of the EPA regulating in Congress's stead should persuade lawmakers to look at climate-change afresh."
In an op-ed published by the Washington Post, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who is also the founding president of Green Cross International and head of the Climate Change Task Force, wrote that the "global environmental crisis is at the heart of practically all the problems now confronting us, including the need to create a global economic model grounded in the public good. It is directly linked to security issues and to increasingly dangerous ethnic and international conflicts; to mass migrations and displacements of people, which are already destabilizing politics and economics; to growing poverty and social inequality; to the water crisis and energy and food shortages." Gorbachev wrote that the Climate Change Task Force "will closely watch the political leaders. More than 60 heads of state will take a personal leadership test there. We have seen how easy it would be to fail. The weeks and months ahead offer them a chance to show that they can truly lead."
On Climategate, the Washington Times said in an editorial that global-warming advocates were hiding flawed data. "If climate-change research were all on the up-and-up, there would be no reason to hide it." The Times stressed that such advocates would find no support in research other than that unveiled at Britain's University of East Anglia, "because other institutions are dragging their feet on disclosure as well. NASA has been less than forthcoming about its data, as brushed off Freedom of Information Act requests have exposed."
The Gainesville Sun, in an editorial, noted that the EPA endangerment announcement "was obviously timed to coincide with the convening of the international conference on climate change in Copenhagen. It gives President Obama the opportunity to demonstrate that the U.S. is taking action even as Congress debates more comprehensive climate change legislation. America's strategy for confronting global warming remains unclear. But credit the administration for at least moving the debate forward with positive action."
