http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/0828-10.htm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AUGUST 28, 2003, 1:08 PM
CONTACT: Sierra Club
David Willett 202-675-6698
Joseph Mendelson 202-547-9359
Kert Davies 202-319-2455
Environmentalists
Force Bush Administration To Admit Failure on Global Warming -
Administration Refuses Groups' Legal Efforts For
National Standards to Protect Human Health and Environment
WASHINGTON - August
28 - Today the Bush Administration's Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) was forced to admit its continued failure
to take action to reduce the impacts of global warming. Responding
to a lawsuit filed by three environmental organizations, the Bush
Administration is expected today to officially announce it will
do
nothing to protect Americans from global warming pollution caused
largely by greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. In an abrupt
about-face from earlier agency statements, EPA now claims that
it lacks the necessary authority to regulate such heat-trapping
emissions, leaving American communities at risk from global
warming impacts.
The move comes a little
over a year after the Bush Administration
issued a controversial report that acknowledged global warming
actually does exist and is caused by human activities, citing
alarming impacts such as hotter climates, increased air pollution
and disease, and the destruction of alpine meadows, barrier
islands, coral reefs, southern forests. Today's announcement
was compelled by a lawsuit filed by the International Center
for Technology Assessment, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace in
December 2002. International Center for Technology Assessment,
et al. v. Whitman, Docket No. 02-2376 (D.D.C. filed
December 5, 2002).
"Environmental
groups succeeded in forcing the Bush Administration
to decide whether it will protect Americans from global warming
pollution from automobiles. Unfortunately, the Administration
said it will not do so," said David Bookbinder, senior attorney
with the Sierra Club.
"The Bush Administration
is again ducking its legal and moral
responsibility to address global warming. But instead of just
admitting that it isn't doing anything about global warming,
now the Bush Administration saying it's not their job,"
Bookbinder said.
The Clean Air Act requires
EPA to limit all air pollution
from automobiles that "may reasonably be anticipated to
endanger public health or welfare." During the Clinton
Administration, EPA testified before Congress that it
had the necessary authority to regulate carbon dioxide
(CO2) as a global warming pollutant. Despite this previous
testimony, the Bush Administration EPA now claims that
it is powerless to address the growing impacts of global
warming on human health and the environment.
"The EPA's decision
makes it clear that the Bush Administration
refuses to take any concrete steps to fight global warming,"
said Joseph Mendelson, Legal Director of the International
Center for Technology Assessment (CTA), one of the plaintiffs.
"We will challenge
this determination in court," Mendelson stated.
In October 1999, CTA,
Greenpeace and other environmental
groups originally submitted a formal petition to EPA
demanding that it comply with the Clean Air Act and protect
public health by regulating global warming pollution.
After delays, EPA eventually opened a public comment
period, during which the Bush Administration received
50,000 comments, the vast majority of which strongly
agreed that the agency needed to address global warming.
But more than three years later, the Bush Administration
had still refused to act on the petition. Last year,
the International Center for Technology Assessment,
Sierra Club and Greenpeace sued the EPA for its failure
to respond.
Global warming gases
have already been linked to unstable
weather patterns, floods, droughts, and outbreaks of tropical
diseases such as West Nile Virus. If left unchecked, global
warming will cause rising sea levels, the melting of the
polar icecaps, and a host of other environmental problems
that are beginning to seriously affect the lives of virtually
every American.
"Add this chapter
to the Bush Administration's lousy track
record on global warming. This Administration's pattern of
delaying action and denying the scientific evidence of
global warming must stop, the planet's climate is in chaos."
said Kert Davies, climate coordinator for Greenpeace.
The Sierra Club, Greenpeace,
CTA and several states plan
on bringing the Bush Administration to court over this
violation of the Clean Air Act.
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