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Clearing the air: EPA announcement opens the door to tighter regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that could endanger public health and welfare, a move that will likely set the stage to regulate harmful emissions, mainly carbon dioxide. No regulation guidelines were announced Friday, but earlier in the week lawyers from environmental powerhouse groups Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council said regulations requiring better fuel efficiency in vehicles will likely be the first step. Regulating other huge emitters, like coal-fired power plants, could follow.

“This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low-carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation,” says EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “This pollution problem has a solution—one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”

THE DETAILS: The decision to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases stems from an EPA “endangerment finding” in which an analysis of peer-reviewed, scientific data found that six gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—present at unprecedented levels (as a result of human emissions) are altering the climate.

Today’s finding comes about a decade after EPA was first petitioned to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. In 2003, EPA denied that petition and a D.C. Circuit Court upheld the agency’s decision. In 2007, the Supreme Court rejected the EPA’s reasons for denying the petition, and ordered the agency to base its decision on whether tailpipe emissions contribute to air pollution that endangers health or welfare. At the end of 2007, the EPA found there was a positive endangerment to welfare (they wouldn’t say it threatened human health), submitted it to the White House, but then withdrew the proposal.

The endangerment finding determined that ground-level ozone pollution threatens human health and impacts climate changes that trigger drought, heavy downpours and flooding, more frequent and intense heat waves and wildfires, greater sea level rise, and more intense storms, and that bring harm to water resources, farming, wildlife, and ecosystems.

The proposed endangerment finding now enters the public comment period, the next step in the process before it is finalized.