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EPA Declares CO2 a Pollutant

Agency can regulate greenhouse gases under Clean Air Act

By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff

Posted Dec 7, 2009 3:35 PM CST

(Newser) – It's official: the Obama administration today declared greenhouse gases a threat to public health, which will allow the agency to use the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions without congressional approval, the Washington Post reports. "There are no more excuses for delay," said EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, who will appear at the climate conference in Copenhagen this week. "This administration will not ignore science and the law any longer."

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson makes announcement on climate during a news conference in Washington, Monday, Dec. 7, 2009.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson makes announcement on climate during a news conference in Washington, Monday, Dec. 7, 2009.   (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 74 comments
mehrheit
Dec 10, 2009 12:29 PM CST
This is the RESULT of a supreme court case. See Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (2007). --- From a NYTimes article "The environmental agency is under order from the Supreme Court to make a determination whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare, an order that the Bush administration essentially ignored despite near-unanimous belief among agency experts that research points inexorably to such a finding." --- Agency experts were right, and that's what the current article is announcing.
mehrheit
Dec 9, 2009 4:59 AM CST
This hit me very hard as I watched our government take increasingly authoritarian measures to "protect us from the terrists" and everybody just took it. From the "Patriot" act, to the BS wars, indefinite detention, wiretapping, torture(! My country tis of ******* torture? WTF!), they got away with every damn bit of it. I'm not suggesting we're becoming fascist, but I'm no longer comforted by the illusion that it could never happen here. (Er, and, uh, sorry for going so far off topic...)
mehrheit
Dec 9, 2009 4:55 AM CST
I wouldn't disagree with you that we are a much different country than post WW1 Germany demographically and (so far) economically. The most chilling part of the German professor's story has to do with his descriptions of the gradual erosion of liberties. The Nazi gov't only achieved such total control by keeping each change small enough to avoid outraging the entire population. When seen in it's entirety, the Nazi program is repellent to almost everybody. To many people actually living through it, it was still a series of increasingly unpopular steps, but no *single* outrage was large enough to mobilize a critical mass against it.
Politics • Green • US • World

 
greenhouse gases • carbon dioxide • global warming • Environmental Protection Agency • carbon emissions • EPA • Obama administration • Lisa Jackson • Copenhagen climate change conference

 
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