Boxer Calls Endangerment Finding “Long Overdue”

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, today made the following remarks regarding the Obama Administration’s release of a proposed finding that global warming pollution endangers public health and welfare.

Senator Boxer said: “The release of EPA’s proposed finding that global warming is a threat to public health and welfare is long overdue — we have lost eight years in this fight. The Clean Air Act provides EPA with an effective toolbox for cutting greenhouse gas emissions right now.”

“However, the best and most flexible way to deal with this serious problem is to enact a market based cap and trade system which will help us make the transition to clean energy and will bring us innovation and strong economic growth.”

In a series of hearings, Boxer’s Committee established that global warming pollution is already beginning to heat the planet. In a release, Boxer said the dangers of unchecked global warming include risks to public health, including longer and harsher heat waves with more heat-related illness and death, increased water-borne disease from degraded water quality, and more cases of respiratory disease, including asthma and other lung diseases, from increased smog. Children and the elderly will be especially vulnerable.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that in the U.S., unchecked global warming will lead to reduced snowpack in the western mountains, critically reducing access to water. There will also be prolonged droughts and insect invasions that kill crops and damage forests, leaving them more susceptible to fire. Coastal communities and habitats will be battered by rising sea levels and intensified storms. Boxer’s committee claimed some scientists have also found that up to 40 percent of species may be lost if global warming continues unabated.

Inhofe Says EPA Endangerment Finding Will Destroy Jobs, Harm Consumers

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said today that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed endangerment finding will unleash a torrent of regulations that will destroy jobs, harm consumers, and extend the agency’s reach into every corner of American life. Despite enormous expense and hardship for the American economy, these regulations will have virtually no effect on climate change. 

“Today’s action by the EPA is the beginning of a regulatory barrage that will destroy jobs, raise energy prices for consumers, and undermine America’s global competitiveness,” Senator Inhofe said. “It now appears EPA’s regulatory reach will find its way into schools, hospitals, assisted living facilities, and just about any activity that meets minimum thresholds in the Clean Air Act.  Rep. John Dingell was right: the endangerment finding will produce a ‘glorious mess.’ 

“It’s worth nothing that the solution to this ‘glorious mess’ is not for Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation, which replaces one very bad approach with another. Congress should pass a simple, narrowly-targeted bill that stops EPA in its tracks.”  

Endangering Farmers, the Elderly, and Construction Workers: Once EPA makes a finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act, who, specifically, would be affected?  As EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) makes clear, an endangerment finding would lead to regulations covering nearly every facet of the American economy.  In reading through comments filed in the regulatory docket, one is struck by how broadly the Clean Air Act would apply once an endangerment finding is made-especially to sources that have hitherto never come under the ambit of the Act.  EPA received thousands of public comments from various industries and groups that expressed concern and outright opposition-on issues of cost, competitiveness, jobs, and administrative complexity-to greenhouse gas regulation under the CAA. 

AN “HISTORIC” DAY: EPA’s finding is indeed historic news, for the simple fact that it will enlarge EPA’s regulatory reach to an unprecedented degree, extending it into every corner of the US economy, causing enormous economic damage.  According to Peter Glaser, a national legal expert on the Clean Air Act, an endangerment finding will lead to new EPA regulations covering virtually everything, including “office buildings, apartment buildings, warehouse and storage buildings, educational buildings, health care buildings such as hospitals and assisted living facilities, hotels, restaurants, religious worship buildings, public assembly …