Comment Period for Endangerment Finding Expires Tomorrow
2009 June 22
GOP lawmakers and industry sources have requested unsuccessfully that the comment period be extended. Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Mass. v. EPA, it has been clear that EPA would have to make a finding one way or another, so everyone has been on notice for a long time that this was coming. Moreover, if there were any feasible route to a finding of no endangerment — taking “feasible” to include law, science, and politics — the Bush Administration certainly would have taken that route. Instead, they just ran out the clock. That tells you something about how this is going to play out.
Cara Horowitz
Ethan Elkind
Richard Frank
Dan Farber
Holly Doremus
Claire Van Camp
Steven Weissman
Cymie Payne
Timothy Malloy
Ann Carlson
Jonathan Zasloff
Sean Hecht
ericbiber
Legal Planet Guest Blogger
In its endangerment finding for CO2, the EPA determined that carbon dioxide is a criteria air pollutant that poses a threat to human health and safety in the same manner as other criteria pollutants such as benzene, sulfer dioxide, chlorine gas, etc.
As evidence of “health effects” the EPA relies on climate models and hypothetical future weather disasters, “premature deaths”, and other speculations(water vapor and oxygen could also qualify as a criteria air pollutants under EPA’s endangerment “science”).
EPA’s so-called “science” is politically motivated, implausible, and simply not credible. The EPA and its supporters continue to to ignore and dismiss valid criticism of its junk “science” and as a result congressional support for cap & trade legislation is dwindling.
It is unlikely that cap & trade will pass this year. EPA’s fake endangerment finding may be the straw that broke the camel’s back.