Rep. Darrell Issa.Photo: Gage Skidmore

Last Friday, President Obama announced another historic clean car agreement, supported by car companies, the autoworkers union, environmental organizations, and states, that by 2025 will double new vehicles’ miles per gallon and cut their carbon pollution nearly in half. 

Car owners will fill up half as often and save $3,000 over the life of the car. American families will save $80 billion a year at the pump and cut our national oil addiction by 2.2 million barrels per day. And we’ll create up to 150,000 new American jobs. 

Rare good news for the planet, according to The New York Times. Everybody wins.

But not good enough for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He’s a climate skeptic and no friend of EPA or other federal health and safety agencies. And he’s not happy. 

According to The Hill, Issa’s got “serious concerns.” So, he’s launched an investigation and fired off letters demanding that the automakers preserve all documents pertaining to negotiations with the Obama administration. He’s bothered by “lack of transparency.” And notwithstanding the projected economic, environmental, and national security benefits, he’s worried about “the potential for vehicle cost increases on consumers and negative impact on American jobs.”  

Issa made a fortune building a car alarm company — the alarm features his own voice warning: “Please step away from the car.” So he may think he knows the car business better than the carmakers. 

But maybe not. Maybe he should take a lesson from Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), another anti-EPA House subcommittee chair, who acknowledged last week that the carmakers can take care of themselves: “If these automobile manufacturers want to reach agreements with EPA, that’s their business.”

Energy and Commerce Chair Fred Upton (R-Mich.) – no softie on EPA — is also ready to let the deal go forward through the regulatory process. He told Politico: “We’ve not decided to take that [Issa investigation] course … We’ve had some discussions with the auto companies. They believe. They signed the letters of intent. And we’ll see how it plays out.”

Representative Issa, please step away from the car deal.

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The federal court of appeals in Washington today rejected the last legal attack on California’s landmark greenhouse-gas standards for new cars built in model years 2012-16. 

The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sought to overturn EPA’s waiver giving California the green light to set its greenhouse-gas standards. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson granted California the waiver in June 2009, reversing her predecessor’s unprecedented attempt to block California’s program.   

The appeals court ruled that neither NADA nor the chamber had demonstrated injury necessary to support their standing. NADA had submitted standing affidavits from two dealers that the court found failed to prove they are suffering any economic injuries. The chamber — which stridently opposes all of EPA’s steps to safeguard us from dangerous carbon pollution — demonstrated no injury at all.

NRDC joined in the case with California and others as intervenors on the EPA’s side.

The NADA-chamber lawsuit to stop California was largely a political side-show. In 2009, President Obama announced a Clean Car Peace Treaty bringing automobile manufacturers, auto workers, states, and environmentalists together around a set of national greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards based on California’s example. The clean car accord will cut new vehicles’ carbon pollution by 30 percent, reduce U.S. oil use by 1.8 billion barrels, and save new car buyers $3,000 at the gas pump. Consumer savings — calculated when gas cost only $2.61/gallon — will actually be much larger at today’s gas prices. 

The dealer association and the chamber have made no friends by messing with clean car standards that the automakers now support. But they are soldiering on anyway in a second lawsuit against the federal standards. That attack is no more likely to succeed. 

Looking to the future, California and the federal Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation are working on a second round of clean car standards that will extend through 2025. NRDC is urging them to set strong standards that raise fuel economy to 60 miles per gallon and cut carbon pollution by another 40 percent. Standards at these levels would save billions more barrels of oil and more than double drivers’ savings at the pump. 

Automakers such as Ford, and real on-the-ground car dealers, are earning money again and looking at a bright future because they are building and selling cleaner cars under the California and federal standards. It’s time for the chamber and the national dealers association to get out of their way.

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

For Earth Day, Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute posted this shocker: “Energy Fact of the Week: Sulfur Dioxide Emissions from Coal Have Declined 54 Percent.” He includes some nice government charts, which I’m sure he won’t mind my reproducing below.

But from Hayward’s blog, you’d think this happened by itself!

The chief causes of this decline are technology — cost-effective “scrubbers” to remove sulfur dioxide from the waste stream — and resource substitution: We started using much more low-sulfur coal from the western United States.

No mention of the Clean Air Act’s acid rain program — the limits on sulfur dioxide emissions established in the 1990 Clean Air Act. Without the Clean Air Act’s pollution limits, this scrubber technology and switch to lower-sulfur coal would never have happened. Why install pollution controls or use cleaner fuels if you can dump all your pollution in the atmosphere for free?

Who could doubt this? Well, Hayward just slyly omits any mention of the role of the Clean Air Act. But the good folks at the Heritage Foundation go farther, suggesting that the magic happens despite the Clean Air Act. See my colleague Laurie Johnson’s take-down of this nonsense here.

Let’s not forget, on this hyper-partisan Earth Day 2011, that the acid rain curbs were proposed in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush and adopted by Congress the next year with broad bipartisan support.

And this was — dare I say it — the world-premiere “cap-and-trade” program! Proposed by Republicans! Enacted by both parties! Carried out without a hitch by Republican and Democratic presidents, at a fraction of the predicted cost!

Hey, maybe we could use this cool idea to curb the dangerous carbon pollution that’s driving global warming!

Oh, never mind.

This post was coauthored by Matt Pawa. He and I represent the land conservation trusts in American Electric Power vs. Connecticut.

Today, the Supreme Court hears oral argument in American Electric Power vs. Connecticut — a case in which six states and other plaintiffs are trying to put emissions limits on America’s five largest greenhouse-gas polluters. The states are invoking their right, recognized by the Supreme Court more than a century ago, to seek relief in federal court when polluters in other jurisdictions send dangerous air or water pollution across state lines. The suit charges five gigantic electric power companies — American Electric Power, Southern Company, Duke Energy, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and Xcel Energy — with contributing to a massive “public nuisance” by knowingly emitting 650 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, despite having the technology and know-how to significantly reduce their emissions. All by themselves, these five huge companies account for 25 percent of the power sector’s CO2 emissions, 10 percent of the entire nation’s emissions, and 2.5 percent of the world’s emissions. 

The states and other plaintiffs (the City of New York and three land conservation trusts) point to severe threats to public health, natural resources, and property from global warming. California is losing its snowpack, the state’s largest freshwater reservoir. Coastal states such as New York and Connecticut are losing coastline to rising seas and face billions of dollars in coastal infrastructure damage during stronger storm surges. Iowa faces harm to its vital agricultural economy from greater heat and drought. The five power companies, as the biggest carbon polluters in the nation, are contributing to these harms, and their emissions must be reduced in order to mitigate the risks to the states and other parties.

The roots of this case run deep in American law. The states gained the right to bring suits over cross-border pollution when they joined the Union, as an alternative to diplomacy and warfare. The Supreme Court held in 1901 that Missouri could sue Illinois to stop the flow of typhus-contaminated sewage down river. As Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes elegantly said in the 1907 a case called Georgia vs. Tennessee Copper: 

When the states by their union made the forcible abatement of outside nuisances impossible to each, they did not thereby agree to submit to whatever might be done. They did not renounce the possibility of making reasonable demands on the ground of their still remaining quasi-sovereign interests, and the alternative to force is a suit in this Court.

The states’ right of access to the federal courts over interstate air and water pollution continues today even after the passage of federal environmental legislation. According to a pair of late 20th century Supreme Court cases called Milwaukee I and Milwaukee II, the states’ right to sue is terminated only if and when Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency provide a specific regulatory remedy — a limitation on the pollution in question — that directly addresses the problem that gave rise to the dispute.

Four of the five defendants are private corporations, and they deploy a barrage of “sky is falling” arguments for why they should escape any liability or remedy for their massive pollution. The fifth defendant, TVA, (represented by the Justice Department) makes slightly different arguments but still contends the suit should be stopped. While the arguments come under a variety of legal labels, they boil down to several themes.

Their most common claim is that there could be billions of plaintiffs and billions of defendants in cases about global warming, making this case unlike any past interstate public nuisance and utterly unmanageable. But, in truth, there are only 50 states that can bring these cases. And there are only a limited number of private parties, like the land conservation trusts, that could satisfy a public nuisance law requirement for “special injury” that is designed precisely to keep every landowner or private citizen from bringing cases like these.

On the other side, there are only a limited number of polluters big enough to be sued — tens or maybe hundreds of companies, but not millions or billions. Public nuisance law requires that defendants make a “meaningful” or “substantial” contribution to the problem. That is a familiar principle and it leads to manageable results. For example, compared to the smallest of the defendants in this case (which emits 70 million tons of CO2 per year):

• There are only 14 power companies with annual CO2 emissions greater than 50 million tons, and they account for 46 percent of the entire power sector’s CO2 emissions.
• There are only 30 companies with annual CO2 emissions greater than 20 million tons, and they account for 69 percent of power sector emissions.
• And there are only 57 companies with annual CO2 emissions greater than 10 million tons, and they account for 85 percent of power sector emissions.

If you look at the next largest industry, petroleum refineries, the entire industry emits only 200 million tons per year — less than the largest defendant, American Electric Power. The highest-emitting oil refining company emits less than 10 million tons per year. There are only two oil companies that emit more than 5 million tons per year, and only 26 that emit more than 1 million tons. Courts have always employed tests to weed out trivial contributors. 

So the floodgates won’t spill open with billions of plaintiffs or defendants. These are not good arguments for letting these five enormous polluters, responsible for more than 1/50th of all the world’s carbon dioxide, keep discharging with impunity.

The companies and TVA also argue that the courts would get embroiled in an impossible task of determining, like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the level of carbon pollution that’s “just right” for all the polluters in the world. That’s nonsense. As the Supreme Court said in its 2007 global warming decision, Massachusetts vs. EPA, even agencies and legislatures “do not generally resolve massive problems in one fell regulatory swoop” but “whittle away at them over time.” 

This case is about the biggest polluters in this country, and all the states are asking is that those companies take feasible, affordable steps to cut their pollution. That doesn’t require more than proving what these five companies can reasonably do on their own. There are strong precedents in public nuisance cases over water pollution from as long ago as the 1880s, when courts ruled that the biggest polluters could be required to cut their discharges even if the stream might remain heavily contaminated because of other, smaller sources beyond the court’s power. In essence, the courts held that it is no defense for the largest polluters to argue that other sources, large and small, also are polluting. 

The defendants’ last big argument is that the federal courts should leave global warming exclusively to Congress and to EPA. The states and their partners agree that their case will be over when there has been real action – when EPA has put some real limit on the pollution from the power companies’ existing plants. That’s what the Supreme Court found in the two Milwaukee cases. But all parties agree that at the present time there are no federal regulatory limits at all on carbon pollution from existing power plants. 

True, EPA has authority to curb carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act, as the Supreme Court recognized in Massachusetts vs. EPA. EPA has taken initial steps, by determining that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, by setting clean car standards, and by requiring carbon permits for the biggest new sources. And EPA recently agreed in a settlement to decide, by May of next year, whether to set CO2 standards for existing power plants. 

We don’t doubt the Obama EPA’s good faith, but like President Ronald Reagan, we say “trust but verify.” In its brief for TVA, the Justice Department emphasizes that EPA is free to issue no standards at all come next May. And the power industry is suing EPA to block each of the steps already taken, and opposes the effort to set standards for existing plants. The Southern Company, along with many other polluters, is furiously lobbying Congress to yank EPA’s Clean Air Act authority away and to overturn Massachusetts. For these reasons, it would be wrong for the Supreme Court to count these chickens before they hatch. 

The Justice Department’s brief says this case should not be the nation’s “first line response” to global warming. Better to think of this case as the nation’s last resort, if EPA does not act, or is blocked from acting. In that event, the sky will not fall if federal courts begin hearing the evidence on what America’s largest global warming polluters can do to curb their emissions.

Photo: Thomas Totz

There’s lots going on in the center ring of the Congressional Carbon Circus today. Both the House and Senate are expected to vote this afternoon on bills to block the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its job under the Clean Air Act to safeguard Americans from the dangerous carbon pollution that drives global warming. And Republicans keep trying to force EPA-blocking “riders” onto funding legislation that must pass this week to avoid shutting down the government.

To their credit, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats appear to be standing firm. Yesterday, the administration promised to veto [PDF] the EPA-blocking bill that will hit the House floor today, and the president spoke out against the budget riders: “What we can’t be doing is using last year’s budget process to have arguments about abortion; to have arguments about the Environmental Protection Agency.” [Editor's note: Obama did not quite "promise" to veto the bill, as David Roberts explains.]

While the Republicans appeal to their base, polls show that the president and the Democrats are on surer political ground. In both national [PDF] and district-by-district polls, Americans strongly back EPA authority to protect their health from carbon pollution, by margins of well over 60 percent. (Additional polling information can be found at the end of my testimony.)

As this high drama plays out in the center ring, I’ll be testifying in one of the circus’s smaller side rings, at a hearing on “Assessing the Impact of EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations on Small Business.” This is another in a series of when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife hearings on the costs (but never the benefits) of government regulations, before subcommittees of House Oversight and Investigations Committee chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

The script calls for the majority’s witnesses to expound on how the EPA’s carbon safeguards are killing the job generators of our economy. I will offer the token dissenting view. Here are highlights of what I’ll say (my full statement is posted here and you can watch live here):

Mr. Chairman, the other witnesses you have heard are pursuing a false story-line that demonizes the Environmental Protection Agency and the modest steps it is taking to begin reducing dangerous carbon pollution. Contrary to that false story-line, EPA is doing just what Congress told the agency to do when it wrote the Clean Air Act. Congress gave EPA the duty to keep abreast of developing science, and to act when science shows that pollution endangers our health and welfare.

The EPA endangerment finding is backed by solid scientific authority. America’s own most authoritative scientific body, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), concluded in 2010:

“Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.”

H.R. 910, the extreme bill that the House of Representatives is on the verge of adopting, would take the unprecedented step of repealing an expert agency’s formal scientific finding of a threat to health and welfare. Congress has never done this before, and you should not start now. Politicians do not prosper long when they put themselves in the position of denying modern science. Repealing EPA’s scientific determination that carbon pollution causes dangerous climate change would be like repealing the Surgeon General’s finding that tobacco smoke causes cancer. H.R. 910 will harm the health and the pocketbook of millions of Americans. It is both bad policy and deeply unpopular.

The Clean Air Act’s critics get the economics of environmental safeguards completely backwards. Rather than hurting economic growth, four decades of data show that the Clean Air Act helps our economy grow while it protects the health of millions of Americans. Over the past 40 years, the American economy has tripled in size while we’ve cut some forms of pollution by more than 60 percent. That’s because the Clean Air Act does not demand the impossible — it requires only pollution controls that are achievable and affordable. That’s just as true when setting carbon pollution standards as it has been for other kinds of pollution.

EPA is taking great care to protect American families and American small businesses that are the focus of this hearing. In fact, EPA has set carbon pollution standards for new cars, SUVs, and over-the-road trucks that will save billions of dollars for American families and small businesses by cutting their gasoline and diesel fuel bills. And EPA has gone to great lengths to exempt the millions of American small businesses from any obligations as it begins to address carbon pollution from only the very largest industrial sources, such power plants and oil refineries.

Thanks to EPA’s landmark clean car standards, small businesses will save big-time at the gas pump. Under the Clean Car Agreement brokered by the Obama administration, EPA, acting together with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and California, has set combined carbon pollution and fuel economy standards that will lower gasoline bills for American small businesses and families by billions of dollars. The first round of standards, for 2012-2016 model cars, SUVs, vans, and pick-ups, will save small business owners as much as $3,000 over the life the vehicle. EPA’s clean car standards for 2017-2025 will save small businesses even more — as much as another $7,400 per car. I should note that these calculations were based on gasoline costs starting at $2.61/gallon! At today’s and tomorrow’s higher gas prices, the savings will be even greater.

EPA is also working with DOT and California on the first-ever carbon pollution and fuel economy standards for over-the-road trucks. Those standards, proposed last year, will save the owner of a heavy-duty truck up to $74,000 over the truck’s useful life. The money saved on diesel fuel will stay in the pockets of truck and fleet owners and will enable them to pass on savings to every American in lower costs for food and other goods.

Lobbyists for some of America’s biggest polluters are falsely claiming that the Clean Air Act’s carbon requirements will fall on millions of apartment buildings, office buildings, farms, and even churches. The truth is otherwise: EPA has exempted all small sources of carbon pollution from permit requirements for new and expanded sources. Instead, directly in line with congressional intent, EPA has focused those permit requirements on only the largest new and expanded sources of carbon pollution, such as power plants, oil refineries, and other big polluters.

When a company wants to build or expand a big plant that will operate for decades, it is only common sense to take reasonable steps to reduce how much dangerous pollution it will put into the air. So for decades, the Clean Air Act has required that someone — either the state’s environmental agency or the EPA as a last resort — review what the new or expanded plant can reasonably do to reduce its pollution, and put achievable and affordable emission limits into a construction permit. But this review of available and affordable pollution control measures applies only to the largest sources of carbon pollution, like new power plants, oil refinery expansions, or other large projects. This is the same review that has been undertaken for decades for similar sources of other pollutants.

EPA has been sued by dozens of trade associations, companies, and right-leaning advocacy groups representing the country’s biggest polluters. But when put to the test of proving their claims, they failed. The courts have found no merit in their claims of harm. This is no surprise, because the court challengers — like the lobbyists who come up to the Hill — are seeking not relief for the small fries, but special favors for the biggest polluters — power plants, oil refineries, and the like. These pollution giants cannot complain to the courts about EPA’s exempting smaller sources. Their attempt to hide behind the skirts of small businesses should fare no better here on the Hill.

Congressmen, you deny the science at your peril. Likewise, you buy into phony story-lines about burdens on small business at your peril. As I mentioned, large majorities of the American people support the Clean Air Act and want EPA to do its job to control air pollution. They specifically want EPA to do its job to safeguard us from carbon pollution. I’ve appended this polling data to my testimony as food for thought, and I welcome your questions.

Rep. Upton wants to raise your gas bill.Photo: Mike Schmid

Some politicians will say anything to gain from the pain Americans are feeling at the pump.

Anyone watching the news knows that pump prices are rising because world-wide demand is recovering after the recession, oil traders are speculating over turmoil in the Middle East, and U.S. oil companies are only too happy to charge consumers higher prices.

Yet in the fantasyland that passes for political debate in Washington, House Republicans are going all-out to blame high gas prices on — you guessed it — the Environmental Protection Agency. Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (Mich.) is hawking the gas price snake oil as House leadership rams through legislation to block EPA from curbing dangerous carbon pollution.

Thursday, Upton said his energy and power subcommittee “took a strong stand today in support of jobs and against higher gasoline and energy costs by approving H.R. 910, the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011.” In the full committee today, Republican members again claimed EPA’s carbon safeguards will raise gas prices.

But facts are stubborn things. The most important thing EPA has done so far on carbon pollution is to set clean car standards. The actual effect of EPA’s clean car standards will be to lower your gasoline bills. The actual effect of Upton’s bill will be to block EPA’s clean car standards and raise your gasoline bills.

Here’s what EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told Congress last week: “All told, nullifying this part of the Clean Air Act would forfeit many hundreds of millions of barrels of oil savings, at a time when gas prices are rising yet again. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you would vote to massively increase America’s oil dependence.”

EPA’s clean car standards for 2012-2016 model cars will save so much gasoline that car buyers will save as much as $3,000 over the life of the car, while the country will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil. A quarter of those savings will be lost if EPA’s standards are blocked.

EPA’s clean car standards for 2017-2025 will save even more — as much as another $7,400 per car, and cut national oil dependence by billions of barrels more.

And those calculations were based on gasoline costs starting at $2.61/gallon! At higher gas prices, the savings will be even greater.

The Upton bill would explicitly block EPA from issuing the second set of money-saving clean car standards for 2017-2025. And by repealing the scientific endangerment determination on which the 2012-2016 standards depend, the bill threatens to take down the first set of standards too.

So just what lies behind Fred Upton’s attack on the EPA? Big Oil. The oil industry’s refineries pour 200 million tons of carbon pollution into the air each year — they take second place only to the nation’s power plants. Upton is upset that EPA is doing its job under the Clean Air Act to reduce this dangerous pollution by adding carbon limits to the “performance standards” that oil refineries must meet. His bill would block EPA from acting.

Mr. Upton isn’t telling you that oil refineries have been subject to performance standards like these for other pollutants for decades. The Clean Air Act sensibly requires EPA to update those standards every eight years. When doing so, EPA is obligated by law to set limits for additional pollutants when science shows them to be dangerous. By law, these standards have to be based on the “best demonstrated technology” taking into account costs. In other words, they have to be both achievable and affordable.

Past standards for conventional and toxic emissions from refineries have had barely noticeable effects on the price of gasoline — EPA’s 1995 toxic pollutant standards, for example, added a whopping 1/5th of a cent to the cost of a gallon of gas.

Upton claimed last week, however, that if EPA’s is allowed to limit refineries’ carbon pollution, ”You could see gas prices jump another 30 cents or so.” Sounds like an exaggeration, doesn’t it? Especially since EPA hasn’t even drafted the new standards yet.

Well, it turns out that this is just one estimate of what would have happened to gas prices — not tomorrow, but in 10 or 20 years – under the comprehensive climate and energy legislation considered in the previous Congress. In Upton’s upside-down world, “EPA’s regulations are a backdoor attempt by unelected bureaucrats to implement the highly unpopular cap-and-trade legislation that was rejected last year.”

Whatever you may think about last year’s bill, EPA’s steps to carry out the current Clean Air Act aren’t cap-and-trade, and they are far more modest. The bill would have covered the entire transportation sector, including more than 1.5 billion tons of carbon emissions coming each year from cars, trucks, planes, trains, and boats. EPA’s standards for oil refineries are going to address only the 200 million tons coming directly from the refineries themselves — and then only to the extent achievable and affordable.

The big oil companies are being more careful than Upton. They may make broad-brush claims about rising gas prices in testimony and lobbying letters to the Hill, but they’re smart enough not to put in any numbers they know they can’t back up. In his opening statement today, Mr. Upton quoted the claims of an Arkansas small refiner, Lion Oil, that the bill to block EPA is “necessary [PDF] to protect consumers, farmers, and truckers from higher gasoline and diesel fuel prices.” But Lion Oil offers no specifics.

And then there’s Valero, the Texas oil company that bankrolled the unsuccessful Prop 23 in California — and contributed $10,000 to the Upton campaign in the 2007-08 cycle. Valero claims “every credible study” supports its gas price claims, but its letter [PDF] [$ubreq] doesn’t cite a single study or a single figure. (See my colleague Laurie Johnson’s critiques of industry studies here.)

In fact, the oil companies know that, like the clean car standards, many of the steps to curb refineries’ carbon emissions have the potential to save money. Plugging leaks and stopping emissions can pay for themselves in recovered products and lower energy costs.

So if EPA is allowed to do its job, your gasoline bills will go down, not up. EPA’s clean car standards will save you lots of money. And the cost of cleaning up refineries won’t even be noticed, especially amidst the huge fluctuations in oil prices.

But Rep. Upton and his allies have other ideas. If their bill passes, you’ll be paying more at the pump while unrestrained carbon pollution puts your health at risk. Whose side are they on?

Sen. Sherrod Brown.

There are things to like in Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-Ohio) letter to President Obama today about the Clean Air Act and carbon pollution. However, the letter is off base in its concern about EPA’s reasonable steps to assure that big new plants reduce their pollution to protect public health.

Sen. Brown starts by recognizing the achievements of the nation’s 40-year-old air pollution law: “For decades, the Clean Air Act has been a remarkably successful law that has protected the health and well-being of all Americans by significantly reducing the emissions of dangerous pollutants, while still ensuring economic growth. Clean air standards and their implementation must be carefully crafted, however, so as not to unjustifiably impede business and job growth.” Brown also recognizes the imperative to curb the carbon pollution that threatens our health by driving dangerous global warming: “The Supreme Court has required the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to move forward with reducing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing the very real danger of climate change, which threatens our nation’s economic, environmental, and energy security.” And he advocates important policies to complement the Clean Air Act’s carbon pollution safeguards with clean energy research, development, and deployment, including key manufacturing technologies such as combined heat and power and recapturing waste heat.

But when Brown turns to the Clean Air Act’s modest measures to minimize carbon pollution from new power plants and other very big new industrial facilities, his letter loses its way. Brown asks Obama to “reconsider” and “reevaluate” those requirements under his Executive Order on regulatory review. He then repeats the standard tale of woe that industry has set forth each and every time the EPA takes a step forward under the Clean Air Act and other health and safety laws, from lead in gasoline to seat belts and airbags.

Yet for 40 years, their bloated claims have fallen flat. All it takes is a quick review of what the law actually says and an examination of the Clean Air Act’s track record of protecting lives, reducing pollution, and saving dollars to lift the veil on industry’s latest fairy tale. The Clean Air Act’s track record shows what can be achieved when EPA is allowed to do its job: a cleaner environment, countless illnesses avoided, and hundreds of thousands of lives saved. That’s why three out of four Americans support the EPA’s setting tougher standards on pollutants such as mercury, smog, and carbon dioxide. They’ve seen the Clean Air Act work for 40 years, and they want it to keep on working to clean up the air they breathe, protect their health, and improve the environment.

Here is the common sense safeguard that the law requires: When a company wants to build a big, new plant that will operate for decades, it must take reasonable steps to reduce how much dangerous pollution it will put into the air. All the Clean Air Act requires is that someone, either a state environmental agency or the federal EPA as a last resort, review what the plant can reasonably do to reduce pollution. All that is required is that a new plant use pollution control measures that are achievable and affordable. If the measures won’t work, or if they are too expensive, they are not required.

Companies have undergone this pre-construction pollution review for more than 30 years for other pollutants like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter. It has made a big difference in the levels of dangerous pollution that new plants add to our overburdened skies. But it does not stand in the way of new projects: The plants get built, the jobs get created, and the economy keeps growing.

The review for carbon pollution control options is no different. It applies to only the biggest new projects. EPA has carefully tailored the requirements so that it will not apply to any new or expanded facility unless it will emit at least 75,000 tons of carbon pollution per year — no small amount. Despite the disingenuous lobbying claims of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups, the rules cover no schools, hospitals, apartment houses, or churches, because they don’t have carbon emissions on this scale. Likewise, despite shrill alarms from the Farm Bureau, not a single new farm will be covered — not even a huge new animal feeding operation would release enough heat-trapping methane to cross the threshold for review.

In fact, as the World Resources Institute [PDF] has shown, steps to reduce carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act can help make American manufacturing more competitive.

It’s because of the Clean Air Act’s track record that we disagree with Brown that EPA’s actions to reduce dangerous carbon pollution need any “reevaluation.” It’s also why we are confident than any such examination will show once again that Brown is looking for a solution to problems that simply don’t exist.

Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Just days after a series of budget votes in the U.S. House, which NRDC Executive Director Peter Lehner called “an unprecedented assault on public health, clean air, fresh water, open space and wildlife,” NRDC is releasing 20 new polls to probe how Americans nationally and in 19 key districts feel about votes to block the EPA’s work to protect public health.

The new results are consistent with what we’ve found in previous polls and the American Lung Association showed just last week, Americans want the EPA to be able to do its job. They don’t want the politicians in Congress making decisions about how and when to reduce pollution; they trust the scientists at the EPA to protect public health.

Nationwide, nearly six out of 10 Americans (58 percent) — including 55 percent of Independents and about half (48 percent) of Republicans — oppose the U.S. House vote to “block the EPA from limiting carbon dioxide pollution,” according to the survey of 784 registered voters conducted Feb. 18-20, 2011 by Public Policy Polling for NRDC. My colleague Dan Lashof blogged on the bad votes, which have nothing to do with cutting federal spending, a few days ago.

Not only do Americans oppose Congress blocking the EPA, more than two thirds of Americans (68 percent) — including 54 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Independents — said the EPA should move ahead to “reduce carbon pollution without delay.”

It should be clear by now that carbon dioxide is a serious public health concern — just look at these statements from leading health organizations including the American Lung Association — about congressional efforts to block EPA. In fact, the American Lung Association called the House-passed budget bill “toxic to public health.” 

Speaking of toxic, the polling we are releasing today also found that 66 percent of Americans support “requiring stricter limits on the amount of toxic chemicals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic that coal power plants and other industrial facilities release,” a finding that is particularly timely as the EPA is issuing badly-needed standards to clean up toxic pollution from thousands of industrial plants today.

We also looked at 19 congressional districts in eight states. Here’s a table with all of the top-line results [PDF], and here’s a zip file with the full reports for each poll. The national news release is here [PDF] and news releases specific to each district are linked in the list below [All PDFs]:

Illinois: Reps. Joe Walsh (R), Robert Dold (R), and Bobby Schilling (R)

Michigan: Reps. Daniel Benishek (R), and Mike Rogers (R)

Minnesota: Reps. Michele Bachmann (R), and Chip Cravaack (R)

Montana: Rep. Denny Rehberg (R)

Ohio: House Speaker John Boehner (R), and Reps. Patrick Tiberi (R), and Jim Renacci (R)

Pennsylvania: Reps. Jason Altmire (D), Jim Gerlach (R), Patrick Meehan (R), Lou Barletta (R)

Virginia: Reps. Robert Hurt (R), Scott Rigell, (R)

Wisconsin: Reps. Reid Ribble (R), and Sean Duffy (R)

In all these districts, we found that respondents across the political spectrum said they oppose their representative’s votes to handcuff the EPA and think instead that Congress should let the agency do its job of protecting public health and the environment.

The national survey of American registered voters also showed the following:

• 69 percent of Americans — including 59 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Independents — think EPA scientists, not Congress, should decide what pollution limits are needed.
• 64 percent of Americans — including 57 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Independents — think “Congress should let the EPA do its job” versus “Congress should decide when and how greenhouse gases should be regulated,” which was favored by only about a third of Americans (36 percent).

Click for a larger version.

The congressional district numbers and reports are all pretty consistent with the national findings. They are all fascinating, but the results in House Speaker John Boehner’s district are particularly interesting. Boehner is obviously a critical player in undoing the public health protections we rely on for clean air and water. So what do his constituents think of all this?

Fifty-six percent of Boehner’s own constituents oppose the U.S. House vote to “block the EPA from limiting carbon dioxide pollution” and 62 percent say the EPA should move ahead to “reduce carbon pollution without delay.” Additionally,

• 66 percent of Boehner’s constituents think “Congress should let the EPA do its job” versus “Congress should decide when and how greenhouse gases should be regulated,” which is favored by only about a third of Boehner’s constituents. The support for Congress letting EPA do its job spans party lines — 56 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Independents support this view.
• 65 percent of Boehner’s constituents favor the EPA requiring stricter limits on the amount of toxic chemicals such as mercury, lead, and arsenic that coal power plants and other industrial facilities release, including 54 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Independents.

The message from all this polling is as clear as clean air: In every district we polled, Americans want their elected representatives to let the EPA do its job instead of putting the profit-driven agenda of big polluters ahead of the health of their children. Politicians who are considering blocking the EPA and updates to clean air safeguards should understand that doing so is very unpopular. Americans know where these actions will lead and they want their kids to be able to grow up breathing clean air.

Stephen Johnson, former EPA administrator under Bush.

Yesterday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) released a 2008 letter [PDF] from Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson to President George W. Bush saying that the science supported “a positive endangerment determination” on carbon pollution, and proposing an action plan to curb emissions from motor vehicles and industrial sources just like the action plan actually carried out by the Obama EPA.

Who knew controlling carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act was actually a Bush administration plan?

Actually, we knew part of this before, but only part. We knew that in May 2007, a month after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Massachusetts vs. EPA, President Bush went to the Rose Garden and ordered Johnson to implement it by setting carbon pollution standards for new vehicles. And for a while it looked like the EPA actually would be allowed to act — until Johnson sent a proposed endangerment finding to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in December of that year, and the OMB officials refused to open the email. 

At the time, Johnson played the loyalist and declined to tell Congress what happened. But now we see that in January 2008, he appealed directly — albeit unsuccessfully — to Bush to stand by his Rose Garden pledge and let Johnson carry out the law.

The Johnson letter reveals three new and important facts:

1. That the Bush administration’s EPA thought “a positive endangerment finding” was compelled by both the science and the law.  

Johnson wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision “combined with the latest science of climate change requires the Agency to propose a positive endangerment finding.” He continued: “the state of the latest climate change science does not permit a negative finding, nor does it permit a credible finding that we need to wait for more research.” No hedging there.

2. That Johnson’s action plan — to issue an endangerment finding, set vehicle standards, and more — had “cabinet-level” buy-in.

Johnson wrote that the scientific and legal need to issue a positive endangerment finding “was agreed to at the Cabinet-level meeting in November.” He continued: “A robust interagency policy process involving principal meetings over the past eight months has enabled me to formulate a plan that is prudent and cautious yet forward thinking.” Further proof that they were for it before they were against it.

3. That Johnson’s action plan contained exactly the same steps that his successor, Lisa Jackson, has carried out.

Johnson told President Bush he had formulated a “prudent and cautious yet forward thinking” action plan that “will fulfill your Administration’s obligations under the Supreme Court decision.” The plan is attached to his letter. Phase 1 in early 2008 called for these actions:

• In response to the Supreme Court mandate in Massachusetts vs. EPA, issue a proposed positive endangerment finding for public notice and comment as agreed to in the policy process.
• In response to the direction in [the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA)], issue a proposed vehicles rule jointly with the Department of Transportation to implement the new EISA and address issues raised in the Supreme Court case.
• To address requirements under the Clean Air Act, issue a proposed rule to update the New Source Review program to raise greenhouse gas thresholds to avoid covering small sources and to better define cost-effective, available technology.

Johnson’s letter noted that further actions were required: “[W]ithin the next several months, EPA must face regulating greenhouse gases from power plants, some industrial sources, petroleum refineries and cement kilns.” So in his plan he proposed to address these sources in Phase 2, in spring 2008.

Yo! A four-part plan approved by the Bush Cabinet:

• Issue the endangerment finding: Check! Administrator Jackson did that in December 2009.
• Issue joint Clean Air Act and EISA vehicle standards for carbon emissions and fuel economy: Check! Jackson did that in April 2010.
• Issue the “tailoring rule” protecting small sources and limiting new source review to the only biggest facilities: Check! Jackson did that in June 2010.
• Address industrial sources, including power plants and petroleum refineries: Check! Jackson has set a timetable for setting carbon pollution performance standards for power plants and oil refineries over the next two years.

These facts may prove inconvenient for Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) — and their special guest Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) — at Wednesday’s hearing on their bill to block the EPA from doing its job under the Clean Air Act.

The very Obama administration actions that Upton, Inhofe, and company are set on vilifying were proposed by the Bush EPA and approved by the Bush Cabinet.

Bipartisanship?

The writing’s on the wall.

In fall 2007, newly-appointed Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) spoke to a Wyoming summit on energy and climate. Barrasso said:

I had an old medical professor, Dr. Milt Davis. He said “you never want to be diagnosed with mural dyslexia.” I asked him what he meant. He said “mural dyslexia is the inability to read the handwriting on the wall.”

Barrasso continued: “You can harbor doubts about the science, but the political and market realities are under no such illusion — the writing is on the wall.” He said: “Washington is pathetically behind and lagging on a coherent energy picture … And states, private industry, and public institutes are forced to work around the irresponsible absence of action on a federal energy policy.” And Barrasso added this:

The energy debate of our generation is carbon. Period. You can agree or disagree with Global Warming theories, but no one can wish the issue away. And the public policy debate about carbon has dramatic effects on Wyoming ‘s future — our state, our communities, our jobs, our families. Period.

Barrasso’s was a promising start. But it didn’t last. Barrasso moved quickly from “carbon free” to “free carbon.” In 2010, the man who had seen the writing on the wall became part of the wall. Barrasso fell into lockstep behind Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and helped kill last year’s climate and energy legislation.  

Now there’s an epidemic of mural dyslexia. Some 123 members of the House of Representatives have cosponsored bills that, as my colleague Pete Altman writes, choose polluters over children’s health. These “bad air bills” would stop EPA from doing its job to protect our health from life-threatening air pollution — three by blocking any safeguards against carbon dioxide and the other pollutants that drive dangerous global warming, and a fourth by blocking needed cuts in toxic mercury, soot, and smog pollution. 

These bills are just warm-up acts. In recent weeks, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has gone out of his way to partner with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, whose screeds against the climate change “hoax” used to make even members of his own party wince. ClimateWire reports that Upton and Inhofe will soon unveil a bill to “strip EPA of its authority to limit carbon emissions from power plants, refineries, and other stationary sources.” In their own words, Inhofe and Upton issued this statement, together with Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chair of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Clean Air Act: “[I]n the coming weeks, we will outline a path forward to permanently eliminate the threat of greenhouse gas regulation through the Clean Air Act.” 

According to The Hill, Whitfield suggested the bill will come in late February or early March and “will be a broad indictment of the EPA’s policies. It will touch on the EPA’s air transport rules, its new source review requirements, and its plans to impose new greenhouse gas standards large facilities.”

For good measure, Inhofe will join Barrasso to introduce, as early as today, “a much broader bill that would bar the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under any existing environmental law.” Carbon pollution would be exempt not only from the Clean Air Act, but also from laws to assess environmental impacts, protect endangered species, or save energy and reduce our oil dependence. The bill may also seek to preempt states from acting within their own borders and to prevent state and federal courts from giving any justice or redress to victims of carbon pollution harms. “I think you’ll find the Republicans are pretty lock step in this,” Inhofe said.

At the same time, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is negotiating with Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) to broaden his bill [$ub req], which thus far would ban EPA carbon safeguards for two years. She wants to erase the modest measure that took effect this month, calling on the biggest new power plants and factories to install available and affordable carbon controls. 

All these bills are based on a pair of big lies. The first is that EPA is engaged in an “unconstitutional power grab” trying “to regulate that which it has been unable to legislate.” No, EPA is doing its job under the Clean Air Act, a law enacted by Congress, which (as the Supreme Court has found) directs EPA to act when science demonstrates that pollutants endanger our health and welfare. The second big lie is that EPA’s modest plan for curbing dangerous carbon pollution “will kill millions of jobs” and “poses a significant threat to job creation and economic recovery.” But EPA is not allowed to make businesses take steps that are too costly or that would hurt the economy — Clean Air Act safeguards have to be both achievable and affordable. And despite cranked-up prophecies of doom — rightly rejected as unproved by the federal courts of appeals — the economy did not collapse when these measures went into effect on Jan. 2.

Some of these bills may be just theater, intending by hyperbole to make something like Rockefeller’s two-year delay, or a year-by-year funding rider, look good by comparison. But in substance, these supposed short-term delays are no different, and no better, than the Upton-Inhofe-Whitfield “permanent” ban. One-year funding riders, and two-year delays like Rockefeller’s, are like letting roaches into your house — once they get into legislation it’s very hard to get them out. A one-year rider blocking new fuel economy standards was robotically extended five times, contributing (as my colleague Dan Lashof has noted) to the conditions tha
t bankrupted two of our car makers when gas prices rose and all they had to peddle was gas guzzlers.

Rockefeller says [$ub req] he wants neither a one-year delay nor a permanent ban: “What worries me,” he said, is that we’ll “get a bill which abolishes EPA, strips them of all funding, and I’m not for that.” Rockefeller used to say that a two-year delay would give Congress time to complete work on comprehensive climate legislation, but everyone knows that’s not happening in this Congress. So now he says his two year delay is just the right amount of time to allow the development of carbon capture and storage technology (CCS). But as Lashof observed, the main effect of a two-year delay: 

would be to stifle the private sector investment essential to commercializing this technology. The climate legislation passed by the House in the last Congress would have accomplished the goals Senator Rockefeller has endorsed, including providing very generous support for deploying CCS technology. But the Senate didn’t even bring the bill up for a vote, in part because of Rockefeller’s objections. The likelihood is that two years from now Senator Rockefeller will still be arguing we need more time for the development of CCS. 

As Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking member and former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, underlined at a hearing last week, blind opposition to EPA’s doing its job under the Clean Air Act actually hurts American businesses and hurts our economic recovery: 

We need to remember that federal regulations also play a vital role in growing our economy and protecting our health and environment. …

Members who were on this Committee last Congress may remember our first hearing. Like today’s hearing, our focus two years ago was on how to build a strong economic future for our country.  We invited nine CEOs from our nation’s leading manufacturing and energy companies to testify.

And what they told us was that they needed Congress to pass comprehensive energy legislation so they could plan and invest for the future. They told us that sensible, market-based regulation of carbon emissions would spur billions of dollars in new investments. 

Here is what Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, told us: “It is critical we know the rules of the road of climate change as soon as possible to make sure that we are making the right investments. Regulatory uncertainty is postponing investments and … it’s postponing the creation of jobs from apprentices to engineers to Ph.Ds.”

Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric, was asked last week to lead the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. He told us the same thing: “Certainty in the investment world is critical to success. And what we lack today is certainty. … I am a capitalist, pure, plain, and simple. And I just think the system we have today is untenable over the long term insofar as … the science is so compelling on global warming.”

What these CEOS were telling us is that they needed more energy and carbon regulation — not less — so they would know the rules and plan and invest for the future. 

They understood what Alan Greenspan forgot: regulation is often needed to promote jobs and economic prosperity.

As Dan Balz wrote in the Washington Post yesterday, there are clear signs already that the House Republicans are running far to the right of public opinion: “The two pillars of the Republican response to Obama’s speech — the record deficits and a warning that the size and scope of government threaten economic prosperity and individual freedom — fell farther down the list of worries in the NBC-Wall Street Journal survey. A fifth of respondents cited the deficit, and only 14 percent named the role of government.” 

By contrast, in a poll conducted this fall for NRDC, Opinion Research Corp/Infogroup found that 82 percent of Americans support the work of the EPA. And 73 percent support “protecting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority” to “take steps that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric utilities and other major industrial polluters.”

The Republicans overreached in the Gingrich Congress, when they misgauged the depth of public support for protecting health and curbing dangerous pollution. Will they overreach again?

The handwriting is still on the wall.