LETTER FROM WASHINGTON: MAY 2009

摘要

Carbon politics in the US is warming up faster than the climate with accusations that the Environmental Protection Agency is moving to regulate greenhouse gas emissions to satisfy the political priorities of the Obama administration and sacrificing its scientific integrity. The accusations bear more than a passing resemblance to claims that congressional Democrats leveled at Stephen Johnson, EPA chief during the second term of the Bush administration, for failing to regulate GHGs, despite the findings of agency scientists that emissions pose a threat. Democrats said that Johnson's refusal was based on the Bush administration's antipathy toward imposing any type of carbon controls. Can both be right? rnAt a hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, accused EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson of moving with "political calculation" in several GHG-related initiatives. To support his claims, Barrasso pointed Jackson to an April 24 memo from the Office of Management and Budget that was described as OMB's initial comments on the EPA's recent proposed finding that GHG emissions endanger public health. The nine-page memo said that the proposed finding "fails to articulate the process by which the administrator came to the conclusion that scientific findings in totality point to the existence of human-induced climate change that could potentially threaten public health."