CO2 a danger--every breath you take, I'll be watching you

CO2 a danger--every breath you take, I'll be watching you
December 7, 1:08 AMSF Environmental Policy ExaminerThomas FullerPrevious 26 comments Print
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m12d7-CO2-a-dangerevery-breath-you-take-Ill-be-watching-you


Via the omnipresent Watt's Up With That, we read in the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, set up by President Richard Nixon to battle pollution that was setting rivers afire and smog that was choking Los Angeles, has turned its attention to CO2. Sometime this week they will label it a public danger.

There are several layers of misstatement coming from the EPA and its head, Lisa Jackson.

First, CO2 is not a public danger. It is a necessary condition for life on this planet. Even at 10 times its current concentrations in our atmosphere, the gas itself poses no threat to humans, beasts or plants. Increasing CO2 is linked to higher temperatures, which is why this is happening. However, in all honesty, much as I would like to reduce the risk of soaring temperatures, even higher temperatures are not a danger to human health at levels projected even by alarmist scientists. The average temperature in Rome is far higher than in most of these United States, and yet Romans live 6 years longer than we San Franciscans. And those retirees in Florida and Arizona look pretty spry...

I want to reduce CO2 emissions, and to fight global warming. There are compelling reasons to fight global warming. None of them involve a public danger to human health, not from CO2, not from temperatures in and of themselves. It's a worthy fight, but the EPA is not the agency to lead us into this battle.

It gets much worse. The EPA has a limited set of tools with which to fight its battles. They are required to regulate all entities, commercial, public or private, that emit more than 250 tons per year. That means any small school or church with a bus falls into their regulatory scheme. Jackson and the EPA insist they only want to regulate larger emitters, but unless Congress passes an exemption to the law, they will have no choice. Should such legislation not be forthcoming, and probably even if it is, there will be so many lawsuits filed that the courts will be clogged for a decade.

The EPA is mandated by law to conduct its own scientific investigation of substances it regulates. It did not do so with CO2, relying on the IPCC, which relied on East Anglia's Climate Research... oh. Cue John Stewart's video, please... There might be one or two lawsuits that question their approach, and their conclusions.

Do you remember Alan Carling, from earlier this year? He's the EPA economist we interviewed here who strongly advised the EPA not to take this step. About half his reasoning involved uncertainties about the science behind climate change (but hey, that's all settled now), but the other half was due to his understanding of the complicated nature of putting such a regulatory scheme in action. His blog has a post on the EPA and CO2, as it happens, and the impacts from the Crutape Letter scandal still bubbling along in the UK.

The Wall Street Journal article ends with the administration saying that the final part of the announcement will include the potential cost to society of no emission regulations. Funnily enough, there was no mention of releasing the costs of this regulatory train wreck.

President Obama is creating a bit of a nightmare in order to have an olive branch in his hand when he goes to Copenhagen for the climate summit this month. It is a nightmare that will endure long after any good will it generates will have dissipated.

Wotta revoltin' development