http://www.truthout.org/article/white-house-disavows-epa-plan-emissionsFriday 11 July 2008
by: Juliet Eilperin and R. Jeffrey Smith, The Washington Post
The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday that Congress, not the EPA, should regulate greenhouse gases. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said that the Clean Air Act is "ill-suited" to addressing greenhouse gas emissions.
(Photo: Reuters)
The Bush administration today disavowed its own proposal to seek comment on whether the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, declaring that the proposed approach would be unworkable.
Under pressure from the Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent the past 15 months exploring how the government might regulate emissions linked to global warming, a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.
A broad group of senior federal officials agreed late last year that new regulation would be appropriate in order to protect public welfare, but the White House rejected that finding at the time and instead called upon EPA to seek further public comment on the threat posed by climate change.