Environmental Protection Agency

Tue, 2011-03-01 11:47Ashley Braun
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Are U.S. House Republicans confusing "Americans" with the "American Petroleum Institute" by cutting pollution protections?

Kids love clean air and support EPA

Recent polls confirm that Americans across the country and political spectrum actually do agree on at least one thing: that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should keep doing its job – and even do more – to set limits on air pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, two influential groups feel differently than nearly seven in ten Americans on this issue: Republicans in the House of Representatives and the American Petroleum Institute, a powerful lobbying group representing the oil and gas industry.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the National Lung Association, who represent environmentalists and American lungs, respectively, each released public polls asking whether EPA scientists or Congress should make decisions about pollution limits. A key finding of the National Lung Association poll was that "voters overwhelmingly oppose Congressional action that impedes EPA from updating clean air standards [PPT].

At the same time, Congressional Republicans are claiming a mandate to cut funding for government programs like the EPA. House Republicans almost unanimously voted to prevent the EPA from doing its job – and specifically from enacting regulations on carbon emissions this year - by cutting EPA's 2011 budget by $3 billion in the spending bill which passed the U.S. House on February 19, 2011. 

"This is about listening to our country, listening to the people who just elected this Congress to restore discipline with respect to our spending," Frank Guinta (R-New Hampshire) said during the debate on the budget legislation. But to whom Republicans are listening should perhaps be up for debate.

Read more: Are U.S. House Republicans confusing "Americans" with the "American Petroleum Institute" by cutting pollution protections?
Sat, 2011-02-26 16:11Brendan DeMelle
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Must-Read NY Times Story On Gas Fracking Reveals Radioactive Wastewater Threat

An incredible piece just broke in the New York Times showing that hydraulic fracking in the Marcellus Shale is drawing huge amounts of radioactivity up from the earth with the fracking fluids, often going straight through a municipal waste water treatment plant and then dumped into rivers -- above public drinking water intake locations.  The piece proves that EPA knows this is going on, and that it is likely illegal. 

Highly recommended reading for anyone concerned about the real threats posed by this gas industry practice to drinking water, public health and the environment.

DRILLING DOWN: Regulation Lax as Gas Wells' Tainted Water Hits Rivers

Read more: Must-Read NY Times Story On Gas Fracking Reveals Radioactive Wastewater Threat
Fri, 2011-02-25 11:55Brendan DeMelle
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Natural Gas Industry Rhetoric Versus Reality

As the recent natural gas industry attacks on the Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland demonstrate, the gas industry is mounting a powerful PR assault against journalists, academics and anyone else who speaks out against the dangers of hydraulic fracturing and other threats to public health and the environment from shale gas development. DeSmogBlog has analyzed some of the common talking points the industry and gas proponents use to try to convince the public and lawmakers that fracking is safe despite real concerns raised by residents living near gas drilling sites, whose experiences reveal a much more controversial situation.

DeSmogBlog extensively reviewed government, academic, industry and public health reports and interviewed the leading hydraulic fracturing experts who challenge the industry claims that hydraulic fracturing does not contaminate drinking water, that the industrial fracking fluids pose no human health risk, that states adequately regulate the industry and that natural gas has a lighter carbon footprint than other fossil fuels like oil and coal.

Below are ten of the most commonly repeated claims by the industry about the 'safety' of hydraulic fracturing and unconventional natural gas development, along with extensive evidence showing their claims are pure rhetoric, and not reality.

Read more: Natural Gas Industry Rhetoric Versus Reality
Mon, 2011-02-14 11:38TJ Scolnick
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The Facts Are In, The Tar Sands Are Dirty, But Industry Spin Campaign Continues

Last year, as part of its review of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline planned to deliver dirty tar sands oil from Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the carbon emissions from Canadian oil sands crude would be approximately 82% greater than average US crude.
 
Tar sands oil producers, fossil fuel advocates and Canadian and Alberta politicians were understandably worried about the reputation of their dirty oil. To battle these new facts, these groups have actively engaged in a campaign to greenwash the tar sands by promoting it as "ethical oil".  They've even commissioned their own report by the Cambridge Energy Research Associates suggesting that emissions from tar sands oil were only 5-15% higher than traditional oil products. 

Read more: The Facts Are In, The Tar Sands Are Dirty, But Industry Spin Campaign Continues
Wed, 2011-02-09 14:39TJ Scolnick
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The Koch-Exxon-Skeptic Argument Went Up In Smoke On Eve Of Upton's Show Trial

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its authority to regulate global warming pollution went through its first shakedown today before the Koch Industries and ExxonMobil funded [pdf] House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Energy and Power Subcommittee.

The show trial was a chance for the Kochtopus, fossil fuel interests, and global warming skeptics (including Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) who announced he is releasing a denialist book) to cry foul that industry is being victimized and that global warming is not a threat, and does not pose any risks to the health and well-being of Americans, and the planet.

But Chairman Fred Upton's (R-MI) and co-author Sen. Inhofe’s polluter-friendly bill, “The Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011” (see memo [pdf]) had to contend with the “bombshell” revelations released late on the eve before the meeting. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Committee, posted a particularly relevant January 2008 letter [pdf] from former EPA Administrator Steven L. Johnson to then President George W. Bush.

Read more: The Koch-Exxon-Skeptic Argument Went Up In Smoke On Eve Of Upton's Show Trial
Wed, 2011-02-09 08:10Chris Mooney
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Who Needs Scientists When You’ve Got James Inhofe?

The big news so far from the current hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power—concerning the so-called “Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011”—is that Senator James Inhofe, the leading climate change denier in the U.S. Congress, has a book coming out.

Read more: Who Needs Scientists When You’ve Got James Inhofe?
Tue, 2011-02-08 17:19TJ Scolnick
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Coal’s Main Man(chin) In Washington

On the heels of three short-sighted pieces of legislation in the US Senate aiming to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPAs) authority over global warming pollution (from Senators Barrasso, Rockefeller and Inhofe), last Thursday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) delivered his first attempt to end the EPA’s general oversight capacity with the “EPA Fair Play Act.”

In spite of popular support for the EPA (77% feel the agency should be allowed to “do its job”), Manchin’s first piece of legislation has significant implications for undermining health, safety and environmental protections and bolsters Newt Gingrich’s recent calls to dismantle the EPA.
Read more: Coal’s Main Man(chin) In Washington
Wed, 2011-02-02 08:19Chris Mooney
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The Mystery of Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich is a very smart, very intellectual kind of guy. Not only does he hold a Ph.D., but he professes to love science. In May 2002, after leaving Congress, he could be found calling for a tripling of the budget of the National Science Foundation. 

Just look at this 2008 Slate exchange, discussing Gingrich’s plans to use market mechanisms to address global warming:

Kensington, Md.: Kudos to you for this new initiative, and we all need for you to be successful (speaking as a liberal here). But why do you suppose conservatives have been so virulently hostile to science these past few decades? It's really like watching the 16th century papacy coming to terms with astronomy.

Newt Gingrich: Since I headed the Republican House which doubled the size of the NIH budget, served on the Hart-Rudman Comission, which said the decline of math and science education was our second greatest threat as a country, and helped save the international space station when short-sighted people wanted to kill it, I'm not sure I identify with your question.

I  identify with it. While Gingrich and his revolutionaries were running the congressional show in the 1990s, they dismantled their own scientific advisory office, the Office of Technology Assessment. Then they held show hearings to cast doubt on the science of climate and the science of ozone depletion.

They loved science--except when they didn’t.

Now Gingrich is back again, as a possible GOP presidential candidate. And he is calling for nothing less than dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency.

Read more: The Mystery of Newt Gingrich
Tue, 2011-02-01 18:21TJ Scolnick
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Senator Rockefeller Takes A Turn At Subverting EPA Authority To Use The Clean Air Act

Advocates of congressional action on global warming had a “case of the Mondays” this week. Not to be outdone by his Republican colleagues,  Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced his own legislation to freeze federal efforts to curb carbon emissions.

If enacted, bill S.231 will not be as disastrous as Senator John Barrasso’s (R-WY) Defending Affordable Energy and Jobs Act, but it will nonetheless prevent (or suspend) the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon emissions from stationary sources like power plants and refineries, for two years.

While Rockefeller has described the perils of global warming pollution: "Greenhouse gas emissions are not healthy for our Earth or for her people, and we must take serious action to reduce them," he has also led the charge amongst centrist and dirty energy funded Democrats to prevent the EPA from using clean air laws to protect public health and the environment from global warming pollution. Indeed, for his efforts, Rolling Stone named him no.9 on its list of 12 politicians and executives blocking progress on climate action.

Since 1999, he has received some $368,850 from coal and oil interests, and during the 2005-2010 period $130,300 from the Mining industry and $107,550 from Electric Utilities.  He has also received close to $40,000 from Peabody Energy, the world's largest publicly held coal company, and whose CEO Gregory Boyce ranked no.4 on the Rolling Stone list.

Read more: Senator Rockefeller Takes A Turn At Subverting EPA Authority To Use The Clean Air Act
Mon, 2011-01-31 12:21TJ Scolnick
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Why Wait For The US? Report Recommends Unilateral Canadian Action On Climate Change

Canada’s National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE), a panel composed mainly of government appointees from industry and former Conservative politicians, has released a new report assessing whether Canada should “lead, lag, or harmonize” climate policies with the US, and the consequences of doing so.

In recent years, the Canadian federal government has opposed unilaterally acting on climate change, instead committing to harmonize greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions with the US in a continental approach. This has been a favourite position for Canadian Environmental Ministers wishing to postpone acting on climate change for fear of locking Canada into GHG emissions reductions, and notably for Jim Prentice who quit as Environment Minister late last year:

"Our determination to harmonize our climate change policy with that of the United States also extends beyond greenhouse gas emission targets: we need to proceed even further in aligning our regulations."

"We will only adopt a cap-and-trade regime if the United States signals that it wants to do the same. Our position on harmonization applies equally to regulation…Canada can go down either road — cap-and-trade or regulation — but we will go down neither road alone."

Read more: Why Wait For The US? Report Recommends Unilateral Canadian Action On Climate Change

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