Agency avoids clean air

The Supreme Court announced this week that it will hear a case the Associated Press says may… The Supreme Court announced this week that it will hear a case the Associated Press says may lead to “one of the court’s most important decisions on the environment.” It’s also a case that holds great weight for our children and for our children’s children.

The issue at hand is whether the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal entity established in 1970 to (get this) protect the environment, should regulate vehicle and power-plant emissions of carbon dioxide.

The case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, pits Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Baltimore, New York City, Washington, D.C., the Pacific Island of American Samoa, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth against the EPA, the Bush administration, 10 other states and the petroleum industry.

Those filing the suit say that the issue “goes to the heart of the EPA’s statutory responsibility to deal with the most pressing environmental problem of our time” — global warming.

The Bush administration replied by asserting that the EPA doesn’t have to “embark on the extraordinarily complex and scientifically uncertain task of addressing the global issue of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Really? So if something’s difficult or complicated, we should just ignore it?

According to the EPA’s Web site, its mission includes “the establishment and enforcement of environmental protection standards consistent with national environmental goals.”

Might those be the type of goals outlined in Bush’s 2006 State of the Union Address? The type of goals Bush spoke about when he announced the “Advanced Energy Initiative?” Bush said he was increasing “clean-energy research” by 22 percent in order “to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas.” Those two vital areas are power plants and automobiles.

The EPA maintains that it doesn’t have to concern itself with emissions standards, and a lower court ruled (though just barely) in its favor. But if the EPA doesn’t have to worry about such important environmental issues, then who does?

By almost all accounts, carbon dioxide is the leading greenhouse gas, meaning it’s just the sort of thing that causes global warming. Levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere have increased about 36 percent in less than a century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. The World Meteorological Organization claims that carbon dioxide is responsible for 90 percent of global warming in the last 10 years. The leading cause of the increase is consumption of fossil fuels, like petroleum.

The petroleum industry’s reaction to the court case?

“Fundamentally, we don’t think carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and so we don’t think these attempts are a good idea,” John Felmy of the American Petroleum Institute said in an Associated Press report Monday.

Seriously? So cigarettes don’t cause cancer, and fast food’s healthy, right?

Clearly, there must be more to it than that. Money, perhaps?

Interestingly enough, Felmy’s title at the American Petroleum Institute is chief economist.

President Bush, though he said during his first campaign for the presidency that he supported carbon dioxide regulation, now says he supports voluntary regulation by businesses because mandatory emission caps would cost too much.

Really, though, can you put a price on the safety of the world and its inhabitants? For an administration that so often touts the importance of family values, Bush and his buddies seem awfully unconcerned with making sure Earth still exists for future generations to practice those values in.

Physicist Stephen Hawking thinks current environmental issues are of such great concern that we should look seriously into colonizing other planets. He told a group of Chinese students in Beijing recently that he’s “very worried about global warming,” noted the AP.

“It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species,” Hawking said in Hong Kong, according to an AP story last week. “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”

The AP also mentioned that China is the second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, following the United States. Though the Unites States has fewer than 300,000,000 people, compared to China’s 1.3 billion, the United States surpasses China in greenhouse-gas production.

So if Hawking thought it important to warn the Chinese about global warming, I’m guessing it’s important for us to pay attention as well.

It will certainly be tough for Bush and the oil companies to look past their own pockets, but it’s worth spending the extra money to make sure the world still exists for our children and grandchildren. How’s that for family values, Mr. President?

E-mail Jessica at editor@pittnews.com.