EPA’ s Lisa Jackson panders to Copenhagen on opening day. Planned for months of course, with public comment ignored. It is now the people -vs- the EPA, coming to a courtroom near you.
From the EPA press release:
EPA: Greenhouse Gases Threaten Public Health and the Environment
Science overwhelmingly shows greenhouse gas concentrations at unprecedented levels due to human activity
WASHINGTON – After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.
GHGs are the primary driver of climate change, which can lead to hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans.
“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the United States Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Business leaders, security experts, government officials, concerned citizens and the United States Supreme Court have called for enduring, pragmatic solutions to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change. This continues our work towards clean energy reform that will cut GHGs and reduce the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our national security and our economy.”
EPA’s final findings respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that GHGs fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants. The findings do not in and of themselves impose any emission reduction requirements but rather allow EPA to finalize the GHG standards proposed earlier this year for new light-duty vehicles as part of the joint rulemaking with the Department of Transportation.
On-road vehicles contribute more than 23 percent of total U.S. GHG emissions. EPA’s proposed GHG standards for light-duty vehicles, a subset of on-road vehicles, would reduce GHG emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons and conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of model year 2012-2016 vehicles.
EPA’s endangerment finding covers emissions of six key greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – that have been the subject of scrutiny and intense analysis for decades by scientists in the United States and around the world.
Scientific consensus shows that as a result of human activities, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere are at record high levels and data shows that the Earth has been warming over the past 100 years, with the steepest increase in warming in recent decades. The evidence of human-induced climate change goes beyond observed increases in average surface temperatures; it includes melting ice in the Arctic, melting glaciers around the world, increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans due to excess carbon dioxide, changing precipitation patterns, and changing patterns of ecosystems and wildlife.
President Obama and Administrator Jackson have publicly stated that they support a legislative solution to the problem of climate change and Congress’ efforts to pass comprehensive climate legislation. However, climate change is threatening public health and welfare, and it is critical that EPA fulfill its obligation to respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that determined that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.
EPA issued the proposed findings in April 2009 and held a 60-day public comment period. The agency received more than 380,000 comments, which were carefully reviewed and considered during the development of the final findings.
Information on EPA’s findings: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment.html
Call their bluff. This overreach will destroy the economy and it belongs to the Libs. This is the certain formula for 25% unemployment. There won’t be a democrat left standing – anywhere – and they know it.
By all means, write your democrat congressional reps. Invite them to take this path.
This is no longer about the environment or climate change. This is a full-on, frontal assault on democracy itself. I trust our southern neighbors will not allow their democracy to be taken away from them.
Just a few quotes from some of the usual suspects:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our
economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
– Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
– Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
– Professor Maurice King
“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.”
– David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to
discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
– Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
– Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“Our insatiable drive to rummage deep beneath the surface of the earth is a willful expansion
of our dysfunctional civilization into Nature.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil.”
– Sir James Lovelock, BBC Interview
“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species, returning throughout the world.”
-Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake,
use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
– Maurice Strong, Rio Earth Summit
“All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and
behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
“Mankind is the most dangerous, destructive, selfish and unethical animal on the earth.”
– Michael Fox, vice-president of The Humane Society
“Humans on the Earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Healing Gaia
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
“A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells, the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions.”
– Prof. Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
“A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be 1 billion. At the more frugal European standard of living, 2 to 3 billion would be possible.”
– United Nations, Global Biodiversity Assessment
“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”
– Ted Turner, founder of CNN and major UN donor
“… the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million but less than one billion.”
– Club of Rome, Goals for Mankind
“One America burdens the earth much more than twenty Bangladeshes. This is a terrible thing to say in order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it’s just as bad not to say it.”
– Jacques Cousteau, UNESCO Courier
“If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
– Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the World Wildlife Fund
“I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”
– John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”
– Christopher Manes, Earth First!
“Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”
– David Brower, first Executive Director of the Sierra Club
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination… So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
– Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.”
– Sir John Houghton, first chairman of IPCC
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”
– Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
-Christine Stewart, fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level.”
– Al Gore, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
– emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis.”
– David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive manager
“Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send out entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced – a catastrophe of our own making.”
– Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth
“By the end of this century, climate change will reduce the human population to a few breeding pairs surviving near the Arctic.”
– Sir James Lovelock, Revenge of Gaia
“Climate Change will result in a catastrophic, global seal level rise of seven meters. That’s bye-bye most of Bangladesh, Netherlands, Florida and would make London the new Atlantis.”
– Greenpeace International
“Climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon – the man-made natural disaster.”
– Barack Obama, US Presidential Candidate
“We are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“In Nature organic growth proceeds according to a Master Plan, a Blueprint. Such a ‘master plan’ is missing from the process of growth and development of the world system. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years from today it will probably be too late.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
– UN Commission on Global Governance report
“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of today’s problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time.”
– Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution
“In my view, after fifty years of service in the United National system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways.”
– Dr. Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General
“Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance as a means of solving otherwise unmanageable crises.”
– Lester Brown, WorldWatch Institute
“A keen and anxious awareness is evolving to suggest that fundamental changes will have to take place in the world order and its power structures, in the distribution of wealth and income.”
– Club of Rome, Mankind at the Turning Point
“Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, to halt the destruction of the environment.”
– Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced – a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”
– UN Agenda 21
“The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human sepcies has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.”
– Rene Dubos, board member Planetary Citizens
Kill the IPCC
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2764827.htm
It’s too bad toxic metals, such as mercury, and chemical fertilizers are not considered as dangerous as greenhouse gases. If only we could achieve scientific consensus on the health hazards and environmental impact of these “pollutants,” we may have a cleaner, healthier world to leave our children and grandchildren.
Deep Solar Minimum: Not getting enough attention?
http://www.examiner.com/x-17371-Raleigh-Climate-Examiner~y2009m12d7-Deep-Solar-Minimum-Not-getting-enough-attention
How dumped down is the public? Has anyone noticed how the word science is thrown around like some mystical God?? A mysterious God the proles cannot understand. I spoke to Science and Science says “there will be floods, we cannot ignore science, we must prevent climate change, peer-review science, don’t be afraid of science blah blah.”
p.s Science!
Kill the IPCC
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=2148
According to Bob Carter the IPCC should be “killed” and COP15 is the right place to do it. If some of the skeptics present at COP15 could pull off such a trick EPA would be left empty handed because the have officially declared the rely for the science on the IPCC.
I am in favor!!! Does my vote count???
The goal is to damage industry. The definition of large includes good sized courthouses, hospitals and schools. If they apply bias and only target certain industry and size, some judge will be more than willing to sign a restraining order.
From the video, it appears they have already begun Sequestering CO2, within Lisa Jackson.
RE: TurkeyLurkey (16:49:08) :
“Hey Is Water Vapor A GHG that would fall within the EPA regulations?
Just wondering…”
Just wait: the EPA has just as much authority to declare dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) to be a dangerous greenhouse pollutant as they do for CO2. What causes all that smoke you see billowing from the chimneys whenever the climate change is mentioned on TV, colorless CO2 or condensing water vapor?
evanmjones (19:39:28) :
Rise up and take arms.
Take up pens. And voting booth levers.
Beware the “take up arms” thing. It can cut both ways.
It was a figure of speech, bro. However, there is no reason to be politically correct here.
You know what I meant.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I am sickened by this development…
Well, I’ve lit a (potentially illegal depending on an unavailable statement from an ill defined government body about when I may and may not be warm) fire in the old fire place. Had a very large bowl of Ham & Beans for dinner. And I’m making a cup of tea (while contemplating joining a tea party).
Given the prediction of 20 degrees below average for the center of the USA for the next few week, there are going to be a lot of states that the Dimocrates are going to loose. Sadly, Kalifornia will not be among them.
OK, the strategy is clear to me: Attack the attacker. EPA has to be sunk.
In the CNN interview, Markey says “whole villages” in Alaska are falling into the ocean due to the 6 degree rise in temperature …. Funny … I would have thought there would have been pictures on the news at 6.
Can anyone name a village in Alaska that has fallen into the ocean lately?
This will cause a civil war because of the different amount of fossil fuels used by various states. Manufacturing will leave states burning coal. In Colorado where I live the ski industry will be crushed as air tourism dies. Even our green industry will be crushed. Tonight Vestas announced they intend to furlough their wind turbine plants here. They can not compete with China or maybe they will move to Mexico like long time employer Garvin Industries is doing.
I suggest we say a prayer to the patron saint of sceptical science: Giordano Bruno. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno
Unfortunately he was a martyr rather than a saint and was burned at the stake.
The lawyers are on it. We will find a way (more likely several ways) to challenge this in court.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/epa-declares-ghgs-danger.html
Folks – a bit about the administrative process (and hello to Wes T. he and I might know each other in the real world as I work with a lot of air agencies as an industry person). Anyhow, to clarify, EPA did not finalize a regulation on CO2 today. Currently, CO2 is not a “regulated pollutant” under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The endangerment finding is a prerequisite to regulating GHGs from motor vehicles. Once the motor vehicle GHG rule goes final (likely in Q1 or Q2 next year from what I’ve heard from EPA and some other well-connected sources), CO2 becomes a regulated pollutant with respect to the CAA, triggering Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) review for stationary sources. If the “tailoring rule” stands, the major source threshold will be 25,000 tons per year of CO2e as Wes T. notes. However, it is unlikely that the 25,000 tpy threshold will survive a legal appeal since the CAA plainly specifies 250 tpy as the threshold. At that point, congress would have to step in and amend the CAA itself to avert a total permitting gridlock situation. That’s my $0.02 as a fairly knowledgeable person about these matters.
Roger Sowell (20:14:42),
Prepare yourself. This will be one of the expert witnesses against you: click
Dismantle the EPA!
As a small aside, people on George Monbiot’s web site keep referencing the Munk debates that he was involved in and he keeps deleting their comments and the link to the debates. Obviously George is sensitive to the butt kicking he took.
Robbie
Cites for the quotations would greatly enhance the value of the list. It is pretty stunning, and right out in the open.
EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.
The Amish ride tractors to town. No problem. What is their fuel economy?
Andy – I take it you are a Canadian Engineer (Iron Ring). Me too, I suspect quite a few of us lurking on here.
Wayne in Faraway, Alberta (yes, it’s a real place)
Mariss Freimanis (19:30:15) :
I think our public officials have gone stark raving mad. There is no other way to put it.
No. They just have very different goals in mind.