US environment agency near ruling on greenhouse gases

The new administrator of the US environmental agency said it was moving towards regulating the gases blamed for global warming, reversing the Bush-era policy.

Lisa Jackson said the Environmental Protection Agency would decide whether greenhouse gases were a danger to human health and welfare, the legal trigger for regulation under US law.

The US is under pressure to take some action on global warming in advance of negotiations scheduled for later this year in Copenhagen on a new international treaty.

Ms Jackson said the agency owed the American people an opinion on global warming.

“We are going to be making a fairly significant finding about what these gases mean for public health and the welfare of our country,” she said.

Recent decisions have hinted that the agency was leaning towards using a US law to regulate the gases, a step the Bush administration refused to take despite prodding from the Supreme Court.

In his first week in office, President Barack Obama directed the agency to review a decision by the Bush administration denying California and other states the right to control greenhouse gases from cars.

Yesterday the EPA announced that it was reviewing a Bush policy that banned using the federal permit process to require new coal-fired power plants to install equipment to reduce carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas.

Ms Jackson said the agency was now turning its attention to the broader question of regulation under the Clean Air Act. The law has been used since 1970 to curb emissions that cause acid rain, smog and soot.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that it could be used to curb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but the Bush administration refused to use the law, saying it was the wrong tool.

But Ms Jackson took a different position.

“It is clear that the Clean Air Act has a mechanism in it for other pollutants to be addressed,” she said.

“If EPA is going to talk and speak in this game, the first thing it should speak about is whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. It is a very fundamental question.”

But Ms Jackson also said the EPA was not acting alone and that regulation at government level would not preclude new legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions, something Democratic leaders in Congress are already working on.

The Bush administration pulled out of the the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, citing a lack of participation by developing countries and harm to the US economy. In the late 1990s, during the Clinton administration, the Senate balked at ratifying the agreement.

Ms Jackson, a Princeton University-educated chemical engineer, helped spearhead regulation of greenhouse gases in New Jersey, where she headed the Department of Environmental Protection from 2006 until 2008.

While there, she unveiled a plan to reduce the state’s carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by the year 2020 and 80% by 2050.