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160 Michigan Scientists Tell Congress to Let EPA Do its Job

More than 160 scientists from universities across Michigan called on Michigan’s congressional delegation to oppose further attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority, calling the EPA essential to protecting the public health.

The scientists’ letter states: “We strongly urge you to reject any measure that would block or delay the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from protecting the people of Michigan from air pollution and human caused climate change, both of which put our health, agriculture, environment and economy at risk.”

Michigan Professor Testifies Before Congress on Climate Impacts to Great Lakes

University of Michigan Professor, Dr. Knute Nadelhoffer, testified before Congress on the ecological impacts of climate change in Michigan and the Great Lakes region.  He noted that lake ice on all five Great Lakes is decreasing and that Lake Superior is warming at an alarming rate.  He added that continued warming could overwhelm existing water and sewer infrastructure, as well as decrease agricultural productivity in the Midwest, potentially costing the region billios of dollars.  You can access his testimony, as well as archived footage of the March 8, 2011 hearing to gather evidence on the science of global warming on the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s website.

Poll Finds Michigan Voters Support EPA Standards for Greenhouse Gases

A poll found that Michigan voters across party lines want EPA to be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases. Read more about the polling results from the  Kalamazoo Gazette, Grand Rapids Press, Michigan Radio and WSJM.

A Warmer Michigan Faces More Frequent Downpours, Flooding and Killer Heat Waves

According to a 2009 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, if global warming continues at its current pace due to emissions of heat-trapping fossil fuels, Michigan will likely suffer more intense summer heatwaves, intense downpours and flooding, more dangerous air pollution like smog and soot, and more frequent droughts.  Additionally, water levels in the Great Lakes are declining, threatening the lucrative shipping industry. All of these changes will stress Michigan’s public health system, environment and industrial and agricultural economies.

Members of Congress are trying to prevent the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from doing its job and regulating greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. Weakening the Clean Air Act means undermining a program that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives and successfully protected the air we breathe for decades. Every dollar invested in Clean Air Act safeguards has returned at least $30 in economic benefit and savings. Please take action to help protect the Clean Air Act.

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Learn More:

Representatives’ Letter of Support to Speaker Boehner to Uphold the Clean Air Act (signed by 155 Congresspeople)

Senators introduce resolution to uphold the Clean Air Act

The Hill: EPA Report Says Clean Air Act will Save 230,000 Lives and Add $2 Trillion to Economy

EPA Admnistrator Lisa Jackson on the Clean Air Act’s Track Record

American Lung Association: Bipartisan Voters Nationwide Support the Clean Air Act, Oppose Congressional Interference

Reuters: Most Americans Oppose Restrictions on EPA, Poll Finds

USA Today: Polls Show Americans Back EPA and Clean Energy

Southern Environmental Law Center: The Sky isn’t Falling; The Truth about Environmental Protections and the Economy

New York Times: The Bush Administration EPA said it had no choice but to reguate greenhouse gases

Clean Air Act Benefits – Past, Present and Future

David Durenberger: Don’t undercut Clean Air Act

As a Republican U.S. senator from Minnesota, I worked to craft a bipartisan law to strengthen the Clean Air Act in 1990.

President George H.W. Bush led efforts to ensure a strong bill, and in the end 89 senators voted to pass it.

Now, more than 20 years later, Republicans and Democrats in Washington are working to roll back our progress.

The Clean Air Act is one of the great public-health achievements of American history — especially for kids.

The act has prevented more than 18 million child respiratory illnesses and 300,000 premature deaths, and has dramatically reduced the number of children with IQs below 70 by taking lead out of gasoline.

Cutting mercury, soot, smog, carbon dioxide and dioxins means fewer Americans suffer from asthma attacks and respiratory diseases. Further, it will prevent more than 250 million skin cancer cases by 2075 by phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals.

When we passed the sweeping Clean Air Act amendments in 1990, we sought to ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency had the tools to tackle new and emerging air pollution problems.

Today, the EPA is in the process of acting on recent scientific findings to update and modernize air pollution standards as we envisioned over two decades ago.

To this day, I remember the passage of the Clean Air Act as a model for the way national policy should be made where there are a variety of economic, regional and ideological forces at work to challenge its effectiveness as law.

The cooperation between President Bush and the Democratic leadership of the Senate enabled us to move toward practical, realistic and economically feasible health standards and implementation deadlines.

It enabled the Senate to withstand pressures from the House to increase the regulatory pressure. I can’t imagine today anyone wanting to undo an effort that was so fair and so effective.

My understanding of recent public opinion is that Americans — Democrats, independents and Republicans — all support a strong Clean Air Act. This Congress is out of step with both public opinion and history.

David Durenberger represented Minnesota in the U.S. Senate from 1978-1995 and was a member of the conference committee that crafted the Clean Air Act amendments in 1990.

Source: Twin City Star Tribune

Attacks on the Clean Air Act:

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced the “Defending America’s Affordable Energy and Jobs Act” (S. 228).  The bill would prohibit federal agencies from promulgating or enforcing regulations to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, taking any action relating to the climate effects of GHG emissions, or taking into consideration the climate effects of GHG emissions in implementing any law.  The bill would also nullify all rules and actions previously taken by federal agencies to regulate GHG emissions.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY), Chairman of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, circulated a draft version of the “Energy Tax Prevention Act.”  Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) is supporting a similar proposal in the Senate.  The draft legislation would amend the Clean Air Act to eliminate EPA’s authority to regulate GHG emissions due to their climate change effects.  The draft would also repeal EPA’s finding that GHG emissions endanger public health and welfare and other actions EPA has taken to facilitate the regulation of GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act. The draft bill is available at http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/PDFs/GG_01_xml.pdf .

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) reintroduced his “EPA Stationary Source Regulations Suspension Act” (S. 231), which would suspend EPA regulation of stationary sources of GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act for two years following enactment.  Six Democrats co-sponsored the bill:  Sens. Kent Conrad (ND), Tim Johnson (SD), Joe Manchin (WV), Claire McCaskill (MO), Ben Nelson (NE), and Jim Webb (VA).

(Source: VNF.com)

A siege against the EPA and environmental progress

By William D. Ruckelshaus and Christine Todd Whitman, Thursday, March 24, 7:52 PM

How soon we forget.

In 1970, speaking from badly polluted Los Angeles, Bob Hope cracked, “I don’t trust air I can’t see.” Most Americans could see too much of their air. So they demanded that Congress and the president do something about it.

Today the agency President Richard Nixon created in response to the public outcry over visible air pollution and flammable rivers is under siege. The Senate is poised to vote on a bill that would, for the first time, “disapprove” of a scientifically based finding, in this case that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. This finding was extensively reviewed by officials in the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It was finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.

As former administrators of the EPA, both under Republican presidents, we have observed firsthand rapid changes in scientific knowledge concerning the dangers posed by particular pollutants, including lead additives in gasoline, benzene and the impact of contaminants on our drinking-water supply. In each of these cases, the authority of our major environmental statutes was essential to protect public health and the most vulnerable members of our society, even in the face of remaining scientific debate.

Earlier this year, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would cut the EPA’s budget by nearly a third and in certain areas impede its ability to protect our air and water.

The EPA was created out of recognition that pollution — largely an unwanted side effect of an increasingly industrialized society — needed to be controlled or America’s public health and environment would deteriorate. The public called on our national government to step in and halt what the states could not or would not do.

As the EPA was being established, Congress passed the Clean Air Act in a burst of nonpartisan agreement: 73 to 0 in the Senate and 374 to 1 in the House.

During the 1970s, many other laws were passed to deal with air and water pollution, drinking-water contamination, radiation, solid waste, pesticides and toxic substances. Sixteen major pieces of legislation were enacted to address aspects of industrial, municipal or human activity that were threatening public health or the environment. Most were passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by a Republican president, and the votes were seldom close.

The air across our country is appreciably cleaner and healthier as a result of EPA regulation of trucks, buses, automobiles and large industrial sources of air pollution. There are three times the number of cars on the roads today as in 1970, yet they put out a small fraction of the pollution.

Likewise, American waterways have shown marked improvement. Lakes and rivers across the nation have shifted from being public health threats to being sources of drinking water as well as places for fishing and other forms of recreation. Lake Erie was declared dead in 1970 but today supports a multimillion-dollar fishery.

Amid the virulent attacks on the EPA driven by concern about overregulation, it is easy to forget how far we have come in the past 40 years. We should take heart from all this progress and not, as some in Congress have suggested, seek to tear down the agency that the president and Congress created to protect America’s health and environment.

It has taken four decades to put in place the infrastructure to ensure that pollution is controlled through limitations on corporate, municipal and individual conduct. Dismantle that infrastructure today, and a new one would have to be created tomorrow at great expense and at great sacrifice to America’s public health and environment. The American public will not long stand for an end to regulations that have protected their health and quality of life.

Our country needs today what it needed in 1970: a strong, self-confident, scientifically driven, transparent, fair and responsible EPA. Congress should help America achieve that. It should do so not with lowered sights but lowered voices that will result in an EPA fully capable of helping fashion a prosperous, healthy America whose environment continues to improve.

William D. Ruckelshaus was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from 1970 to 1973 and 1983 to 1985. Christine Todd Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, was EPA administrator from 2001 to 2003.

© 2011 The Washington Post Company

The Chicago Tribune reported on Sunday, September 19th about one of the nation’s dirtiest coal plants that sits just across the state line from Chicago: State Line Power Station. As ELPC Executive Director Howard Learner comments in the piece, “It’s a highly polluting plant that has existed for years in a sort of never-never land.”  The article points out that the power plant is starting to get noticed as a push is on to force the plant to clean up.

Read the full article.

Some argue that coal is the cheapest source of electricity available, but proposed federal regulations on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could add additional costs to the power from this plant.

ELPC opposed the construction of the plant. As Executive Director Howard Learner told the Tribune, “These cities and towns are captive buyers at the mercy of Peabody and its ever-increasing costs. People are going to pay higher rates for more pollution. That isn’t a winning formula.”

Read the full story in the Chicago Tribune.

“The Senate’s defeat of the Murkowski Resolution helps protect our environment, public health and the integrity of the scientific fact-finding process toward global warming solutions,” said Howard Learner, Executive Director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. “It’s time to move forward with the clean energy economy future, not backward.  We commend the Senate for siding with the majority of Americans, scientists and the Supreme Court.”

“Our Senators have shown that special interests can’t change the facts.  S.J. Res 26, the Murkowski Resolution of Disapproval, would have been a giveaway to oil companies, resulted in more pollution and exacerbated our nation’s dependence on oil. We should be looking for new ways to develop more clean, American energy sources, not subsidizing the polluting energy sources of the past.”

“Today, the Senate defeated a bad bill. This vote should continue a pivot toward our clean energy economy future.”

The Science

There has been consensus among scientists for years that global warming is a serious problem and that it is caused by human activity.

Basically, “global warming” or “global climate change” refers to an increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans over time. This temperature rise is the result of an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, including methane, nitrous oxide and aerosols, in our atmosphere.

When sunlight strikes the Earth’s surface, some of it is reflected back toward space as infrared radiation or heat. Greenhouse gases absorb this infrared radiation and trap the heat in the atmosphere. Normal amounts of gases are what keep the Earth warm and habitable. But when these gasses build up beyond the normal levels and at a rate that the environment cannot alleviate, global warming results.

The Effect

Global warming is a serious threat to the environment that sustains our health, our economy, and our security.

An increased global temperature will shift ecosystems. Glaciers will retreat, altering water supply for habitats and millions of people. Plant productivity and vitality will change, destroying fragile ecosystems. Freshwater bodies, including the Great Lakes, will decline, affecting water supplies and wildlife habitat.

An increased global temperature will affect our health and well-being. As temperatures rise, disease-carrying mosquitoes and rodents spread, infecting people in their wake. The increased number of hot, smoggy days will cause increasing frequency and intensity of lung-related illnesses, including asthma. What’s more, the increasing intensity and frequency of “natural” disasters can destroy people’s homes and livelihoods.

An increased global temperature will dramatically change global economies. In addition to the expensive damage caused by ever-increasing catastrophic weather events, many industries will be touched by global warming. Some are more obvious – like the ski industry for lack of snow – but many more are affected in more nuanced ways. For example, as temperatures rise, certain insects might survive longer in the year and affect the crops that provide raw materials for any number of manufacturers and consumers.

An increased global temperature will affect our national security. The more attention we must divert to cleaning up after a hurricane or rebuilding an industry after it’s been decimated by global climate impacts, the fewer resources we have to divert to keeping our country secure.

Local Causes

The Midwest is at the center of our global warming problems.

Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin account for 20% of the carbon pollution in the United States with only 5% of the world’s total pollution. The Midwest alone is responsible for more global warming pollution than most countries across the globe except for China, India, Russia and Japan. There are several factors that make the Midwest critical to global warming solutions, namely:

• The Midwest has the largest concentration of old, dirty coal plants that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming.
• As the hub on the U.S. transportation industry, the crossroads of America has developed a heavy carbon burden.

Local Solutions

The Midwest has the potential to be at the center of our global warming solutions.

Clean technologies mean a cleaner world for all. Not only do modern technologies reduce carbon pollution, they reduce other harmful pollutants that poison our lakes, make our land infertile, and harm human health. To help reduce global warming pollution, we are helping to make our energy and transportation systems more efficient, protect our forest ecosystems, wildlife and biodiversity, and improve our air quality and protect peoples’ health.

We need the political and economic capital to make clean energy decisions happen today. For example, renewable energy, such as wind and solar , currently supplies about 2% of the region’s electricity supply. We have the technology to meet 20% of our energy supply needs through clean, renewable energy. The result – a 51% reduction in carbon dioxide – is a larger reduction than proposed by the Kyoto Treaty.

Clean car technology, electric vehicles, and high-speed rail systems can produce more efficient, less polluting transportation options while creating needed manufacturing jobs. We have the technology, but we can only achieve success by avoiding roadblocks and creating policies that reduce pollution.