EPA 'Endangerment' Finding on Greenhouse Gases Under Fire From Beef Industry,
By John O'Dell December 29, 2009Louisiana Enters Fray Voicing Concern About Impact on State's Oil and Gas Industries
The Obama administration's EPA wasted little time in issuing a finding earlier this year that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases posed a danger of human health and welfare.
The so-called endangerment finding - made after the Bush administration refused to move in either direction on the issue - means the EPA can take steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions - from cars, cows, oil refineries, power plants, factories and other large emitters.
That made environmentalists happy, but as usually is the case when jobs and profits can be affected, it made others mad.
Among them - and the first to take legal action - is the National Cattlemen's Beef Assn., which filed a challenge to the findings on Christmas eve.
The suit claims that the science backing the idea that greenhouse gases contribute heavily to global warming just isn't solid enough to support federal regulation of same.
The cattlemen care because methane gas - which cattle and cattle waste produce a whole lot of - is one of the nastiest of the greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat in the atmosphere and thus is one of the gases most likely to be subject to tight regulation.
We doubt, however, that the EPA has plans to turn us all into vegetarians.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican being looked at by party big wigs as a potential national candidate, added his voice to the anti-endangerment argument this week in a letter of opposition sent to the EPA - part of the normal public input period the agency must allow before acting on a proposed finding.
Jindal doesn't address the idea of global warming or what it could do to his low-lying state should it cause a dramatic rise in sea levels over the next century or so.
His concern is more immediate, the "dramatic chilling effect" that regulation of greenhouse gases - especially if it involves fines or fees for heavy emitters - would mean for Louisiana's substantial (and politically powerful) oil and gas production and refining industries, which already have done so much to enhance the state's environment.
The new Clean Skies news service - funded by a nonprofit backed by the natural gas industry - is carrying reports on both the cattlemen's suit and Jindal's letter.
The auto industry, ironically, has welcomed the finding or, if not the finding, at least the idea that it may result in a single national rule about greenhouse gases - something which automakers have been seeking for more than a year - ever since California decided that, in the absence of a Bush-era EPA ruling on the issue, it would institute its own statewide standard.
Things on that front seem to be relatively stable for now, although California already is considering new greenhouse gas rules for autos after 2016, when the present proposed federal regulations will expire.
Except that it is so critical for the future, it would all seem to be a sort of guaranteed employment scheme for environmental attorneys, corporate lawyers and journalists who cover this stuff!
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How can I civilly convey my disgust for the EPA and the current government administration. In the spirit of their ruling, I pray that they themselves cease to exhale carbon dioxide.
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