Greenhouse gases: Citing cost, administration rejects proposal by EPA experts for curbing global warming.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, dismissing the recommendations of its top experts, yesterday rejected regulating the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, saying it would cripple the U.S. economy.

by By Dina Cappiello, Associated Press, Inquirer

Published Jul. 12, 2008, 3:01 a.m. ET

In a 588-page federal notice, the Environmental Protection Agency made no finding on whether global warming posed a threat to people's health or welfare, reversing an earlier conclusion at the insistence of the White House and officially kicking any decision on a solution to the next president and Congress.

The White House on Thursday rejected the EPA's suggestion three weeks earlier that the 1970 Clean Air Act could be both workable and effective in addressing global climate change. Yesterday, the EPA said that law was "ill-suited" for dealing with global warming.

"If our nation is truly serious about regulating greenhouse gases, the Clean Air Act is the wrong tool for the job," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson told reporters. "It is really at the feet of Congress."

White House press secretary Dana Perino said that President Bush was committed to further reductions but that there was a "right way and a wrong way to deal with climate change." The wrong way is "to sharply increase gasoline prices, home heating bills, and the cost of energy for American businesses," she said. "The right way, as the president has proposed, is to invest in new technologies."

At the just-concluded G-8 summit in Japan, Bush joined other world leaders in calling for a voluntary 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gases worldwide by 2050 but offering no specifics on how to do it.

Area environmental advocates expressed deep frustration at yesterday's announcement.

"This is, once again, showing the administration's true colors, and their complete disinterest in this urgent problem," said Charles McPhedran of Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, an environmental-advocacy group. "Fifty years from now, people will look back and say: 'Why did we waste eight years doing nothing?'

"Pennsylvania is important in the global-warming calculus. . . . One percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions in the world come from Pennsylvania."

Doug O'Malley, field director for Environment New Jersey, said Bush's rejection of greenhouse-gas regulations made it harder for his state to continue its effort to regulate emissions. "At the same time New Jersey is figuring out how to reduce emissions, the Bush administration is saying this is not a priority," he said. "There is a complete disconnect."

The Supreme Court ruled last year that the government had the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant. That was a setback for Bush, who has consistently opposed doing so.

Congress has not found the will to do much about the problem, either. Supporters of regulating greenhouse gases could get only 48 votes in the Senate last month. The House has held several hearings on the problem but no votes on any bill addressing it.

Both major presidential candidates, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, have endorsed variations of the approach rejected by the Senate.

In its document, the EPA laid out a buffet of options on how to reduce greenhouse gases from cars, ships, trains, power plants, factories and refineries. Johnson yesterday described the proposals drafted by his staff as "putting a square peg into a round hole." He said moving forward would be irresponsible.

"One point is clear: The potential regulation of greenhouse gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land," Johnson wrote in the preface.

The EPA said it had encountered resistance from the Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Transportation Departments, as well as the White House, that made it "impossible" to respond in a timely fashion to the Supreme Court decision.

"Our agencies have serious concerns with this suggestion because it does not fairly recognize the enormous - and, we believe, insurmountable - burdens . . . of using the Clean Air Act" to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, the secretaries of the four agencies wrote to the White House on Wednesday.

Discussing the benefits from reducing greenhouse gases, the EPA said doing nothing more than increasing fuel-efficiency standards under last year's energy bill would cut the harmful effects of global warming by $340 billion to $830 billion over the next three decades. In a May draft of yesterday's notice, the EPA had put the benefits to society of further reducing greenhouse gases at $2 trillion.