Earth Day and the EPA

Posted 8/21/12

There is a succinct summation of the origins of Earth Day and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the agency’s website (www.epa.gov/).

It reads, “It may be hard to imagine …

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Earth Day and the EPA

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There is a succinct summation of the origins of Earth Day and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the agency’s website (www.epa.gov/).

It reads, “It may be hard to imagine that before 1970, a factory could spew black clouds of toxic pollutants into the air or dump tons of toxic waste into a nearby stream, and that was perfectly legal. They could not be taken to court to stop it.

“How was that possible? Because there was no EPA, no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act. There were no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect our environment.

“In spring 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson created Earth Day as a way to force this issue onto the national agenda. Twenty million Americans demonstrated in different U.S. cities, and it worked! In December 1970, Congress authorized the creation of a new federal agency to tackle environmental issues, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

The author of that introduction may have been a bit hyperbolic, given that hydraulic fracturing operations are currently exempt from the important environmental laws mentioned above—so it’s not really too hard to imagine an industry spewing pollutants into the atmosphere with impunity. Still it’s better to have an EPA than not, because the agency does push the environmental agenda forward. Currently, it is nearing completion of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), which would require that existing power plants reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. Fossil fuel-based power plants, according to EPA, are the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. And, says the agency, unchecked carbon dioxide emissions lead to a lot of negative outcomes such as “changes in weather and precipitation patterns, changes in ecosystems, habitats and species diversity” and “increasing the intensity of extreme events, like hurricanes, extreme precipitation and flooding; increasing the range of ticks and mosquitoes, which can spread disease such as Lyme disease and West Nile virus.”

Many EPA critics say these impacts aren’t real, or if they are, that there’s not a lot people can do about them because (they believe) climate change is not caused by human activity. Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio falls into that category. He said recently on a television news program, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”

Republican Gov. Scott Walker is mostly avoiding the topic of climate change. Environmental advocacy group NextGen has issued a statement saying: “His decision to remain silent as Wisconsin Republicans wage a war on science clearly signals he wants to be the candidate for the Climate Change Denial Caucus.”

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush has said he is “concerned” about climate change, but he thinks the fix is producing more natural gas. He also believes that the markets will ultimately take care of any emissions problems if the U.S. can simply become industrially competitive once again.

So, we would probably see reduced EPA activity under the administrations of any of these three leading Republican candidates, should one of them achieve the goal of becoming the next inhabitant of the White House. (Would they follow the lead of Republican icon Ronald Reagan and remove the solar panel from the White House roof?)

Perhaps the most interesting response to the CPP comes from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who says the EPA must be halted in its—in his view—clear campaign to destroy jobs by any means necessary. In late March he wrote a letter to National Governors Association urging the members to ignore the EPA’s request for a plan from each state as to how they might reach the emissions goal, writing, “Don’t be complicit in the administration’s attack on the middle class. Think twice before submitting a state plan—which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits—when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won’t be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism.”

Several states have launched a lawsuit against the EPA, based on multiple issues, despite the fact that the rule has not yet been finalized. Complicating matters is the fact that, when Congress updated the Clean Air Act in 1990, amendments offered by the House and Senate were apparently never reconciled as they should have been. Analysts are split about the eventual outcome of the case.

Of the 12 states bringing the suit, 11 have Republican governors. Only Kentucky, a state with a large coal industry, is the exception. In contrast, nine states with Democratic attorneys general and officials from heavily Democratic New York City and the District of Columbia have filed papers saying the suit should be dismissed.

The EPA was formed in 1970 in the wake of the first Earth Day celebration under Republican President Richard Nixon. It’s not clear exactly when the environment became a partisan issue, but Reagan’s treatment of the White House solar panels might offer a hint.

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