he Obama administration is once again showing that its renewed commitment to policy based on legitimate science is not just rhetoric. On April 17, 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued two landmark findings, based on climate science, that increase the regulatory scope of the Clean Air Act and provide the justification for further action to curb the production and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. The first report, the “Endangerment Finding,” states that greenhouse gases “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” This finding is based on scientific evidence that the buildup of six major greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health and welfare. The second report entitled “Cause or Contribute Finding” proposes that the combined emissions of CO2, CH4, N2O, and HFCs into the atmosphere from new motor vehicle engines contribute to climate change.
These two proposals are regulated under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) as a follow-up to the Supreme Court ruling on April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007) that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the CAA. After a petition for rulemaking was filed by more than a dozen environmental, renewable energy, and other organizations, the Supreme Court held that the EPA Administrator must determine whether or not climate science provides reasonable certainty that emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare. Under the CAA, “welfare” refers to impacts that include effects on soils, water, crops, vegetation, man-made materials, animals, wildlife, weather, visibility, climate, personal property, transportation, economic values, and personal comfort and well-being. The scientific evidence comes primarily from assessments made by the U.S. Climate Science Program, the National Research Council, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The scientific consensus is that record-high atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases cannot be explained by natural variability alone, but are the result of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Warming of the global climate is well-documented through increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, retreating glaciers, and rising global average sea level. The effects of climate change include, but are not limited to, heat waves, wildfires, poor air quality, changes in precipitation that include droughts and floods, sea level rise, water pollution, decline in agricultural productivity in some areas, and species extinction. Even without a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the effects of global warming will most likely increase during the next century and include more extreme weather events such as hurricanes.
The impacts of climate change on public health are causally linked to changes in temperature, declining air quality, and extreme weather events. Unless climate change is mitigated, there will certainly be public health crises related to the warming planet. For example, in 2003, Europe experienced one of the hottest summers on record, leading to the deaths of 15,000 people in France. Changes in air quality due to regional ozone pollution aggravate asthma, increase the risk of respiratory infection and can bring about premature death.
Unpredictable and extreme weather will lead to further health crises. As Hurricane Katrina showed us, the U.S. is certainly not immune to the health impacts of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and fires. These events are expected to increase during the next century, resulting in poor water quality, the spread of disease, physical injury, and death. These events are likely to displace populations and damage property, which will lead to social instability.
Finally, changes in temperature and precipitation are expanding the potential ranges of organisms like disease-carrying ticks. In December of 2008, Didier Raolt, a professor at the University of Marseille School of Medicine in France, published the results of a study that linked a rise in temperatures to the increased likelihood of dog ticks biting humans instead of dogs.
In addition to public health concerns, the government needs to address the adverse impacts climate change will have on public welfare. Rising sea levels will exacerbate storm surge flooding and shoreline erosion in coastal regions. In the Western U.S., the melting snowpack will limit water availability for agricultural, municipal, industrial, and ecological uses. Water scarcity coupled with rising temperatures may increase the frequency and intensity of forest fires, insect outbreaks, and tree mortality. As temperatures change, many species of animals will be displaced to northern latitudes and to areas of higher elevation. Our oceans serve as a sink for carbon dioxide, but increasing ocean acidification has led to a decline in marine productivity and the loss of vast areas of coral reef. The study also includes the humanitarian, trade, and national security effects of climate change as a threat to international public welfare.
These two findings are significant not only for their inevitable effect on future climate policy but also because they legitimize the idea of sustainability—the ability to meet our current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs—in public policy discourse. They also assert the need for environmental justice and give credence to environmental security concerns. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said that in making these rulings, the agency took into account the disproportionate impact climate change has on the health of the poor, the very young, the elderly, those already in poor health, the disabled, those living alone, minority communities, and indigenous populations.
Incorporating environmental justice concerns into the Clean Air Act recognizes that current environmental protection and land use policies do not equally protect all people and all communities. Dr. Robert Bullard, Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, made national headlines in the late’80s for a study that found that race, more so than other socioeconomic variables, is the determining factor for where toxic facilities such as landfills, chemical plants, and incinerators are located.
In a follow-up study, “Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty:’87-2007,” Bullard found that communities of color are still bearing a disproportionately poisonous burden. For example, when toxins such as mercury enter the environment, they can accumulate in the fatty tissues of animals such as fish that are then consumed by humans. Due to their meat-based diet, the bodies of indigenous people in the Arctic regions have some of the highest concentrations of toxic chemicals ever recorded. The breast milk of women living in Greenland and the high Canadian Arctic should, according to scientific standards, be declared toxic waste. Not only are low-income communities and communities of color experiencing the adverse effects of climate change on their health and welfare more directly, they are the least able to do anything about it; they are often ignored or left behind as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina illustrated.
The EPA also acknowledged the national security implications of climate change. In 2007, eleven retired U.S. generals and admirals from the Center for a New American Security signed a report stating that climate change “presents significant national security challenges for the United States” from the escalation of violence, displacement, and competition that arises
from the increasing scarcity and exploitation of natural resources.
Local and state governments have, thus far, been the leaders in pushing for and creating legislation and regulations that address global warming pollution and climate change. In 2007, the California Air Resources Board filed a request for a waiver from the EPA to implement the California Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards that call for a 30 percent cut of global warming emissions by 2016 from all new motor vehicles produced in the state beginning in model year 2009. The EPA denied the waiver and California, along with fourteen other states, filed a lawsuit against the EPA. The “Cause or Contribute Finding” acknowledges that 24 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from on-road motor vehicles and that such emissions contribute to climate change and are regulated by section 202(a) of the CAA.
These proposed findings now enter a 60-day public comment period before the EPA can issue its final findings. While both findings do not include any proposals for specific regulations, they represent a crucial first step in bringing progressive municipal and state-level policies, such as renewable portfolio standards for utilities and tailpipe emissions standards for motor vehicles, to a national level. These findings also pave the way for more comprehensive climate legislation that President Obama hopes will include some sort of a cap on carbon emissions. Several bills have already been drafted and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for a vote on them by Memorial Day.
