| WASHINGTON
- August 28 - Today the Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was forced to admit its continued failure to take action to reduce the impacts of global warming. Responding to a lawsuit filed by three environmental organizations, the Bush Administration is expected today to officially announce it will do nothing to protect Americans from global warming pollution caused largely by greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. In an abrupt about-face from earlier agency statements, EPA now claims that it lacks the necessary authority to regulate such heat-trapping emissions, leaving American communities at risk from global warming impacts.
The move comes a little over a year after the Bush Administration issued a controversial report that acknowledged global warming actually does exist and is caused by human activities, citing alarming impacts such as hotter climates, increased air pollution and disease, and the destruction of alpine meadows, barrier islands, coral reefs, southern forests. Today's announcement was compelled by a lawsuit filed by the International Center for Technology Assessment, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace in December 2002. International Center for Technology Assessment, et al. v. Whitman, Docket No. 02-2376 (D.D.C. filed December 5, 2002).
"Environmental groups succeeded in forcing the Bush Administration to decide whether it will protect Americans from global warming pollution from automobiles. Unfortunately, the Administration said it will not do so," said David Bookbinder, senior attorney with the Sierra Club.
"The Bush Administration is again ducking its legal and moral responsibility to address global warming. But instead of just admitting that it isn't doing anything about global warming, now the Bush Administration saying it's not their job," Bookbinder said.
The Clean Air Act requires EPA to limit all air pollution from automobiles that "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." During the Clinton Administration, EPA testified before Congress that it had the necessary authority to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) as a global warming pollutant. Despite this previous testimony, the Bush Administration EPA now claims that it is powerless to address the growing impacts of global warming on human health and the environment.
"The EPA's decision makes it clear that the Bush Administration refuses to take any concrete steps to fight global warming," said Joseph Mendelson, Legal Director of the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA), one of the plaintiffs.
"We will challenge this determination in court," Mendelson stated.
In October 1999, CTA, Greenpeace and other environmental groups originally submitted a formal petition to EPA demanding that it comply with the Clean Air Act and protect public health by regulating global warming pollution. After delays, EPA eventually opened a public comment period, during which the Bush Administration received 50,000 comments, the vast majority of which strongly agreed that the agency needed to address global warming. But more than three years later, the Bush Administration had still refused to act on the petition. Last year, the International Center for Technology Assessment, Sierra Club and Greenpeace sued the EPA for its failure to respond.
Global warming gases have already been linked to unstable weather patterns, floods, droughts, and outbreaks of tropical diseases such as West Nile Virus. If left unchecked, global warming will cause rising sea levels, the melting of the polar icecaps, and a host of other environmental problems that are beginning to seriously affect the lives of virtually every American.
"Add this chapter to the Bush Administration's lousy track record on global warming. This Administration's pattern of delaying action and denying the scientific evidence of global warming must stop, the planet's climate is in chaos." said Kert Davies, climate coordinator for Greenpeace.
The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, CTA and several states plan on bringing the Bush Administration to court over this violation of the Clean Air Act.
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