Markey Sends Letter to EPA: Energy Bill No Excuse for Global Warming Inaction

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Select Committee, 202-225-4081

Markey to EPA: Energy Bill No Excuse for Global Warming Inaction

Letter to Admin.  Johnson Asks for Answers Before Select Committee on EPA’s Lack of Response to Supreme Court Decision

Read the Letter HERE.

WASHINGTON (January 22, 2008) – In a pointed letter sent to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) questions the apparent new strategy of the Bush administration to use the fuel economy standards included in the recently passed energy bill as an excuse to shirk the EPA’s responsibility to regulate heat-trapping emissions from motor vehicles as well as to make a long-overdue determination directed by the Supreme Court about whether these emissions pose a danger to public health and welfare. The letter asks Administrator Johnson to appear before Chairman Markey and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to explain the new tack his agency and the administration is taking on global warming emissions.

The letter, brings into focus the continuing erosion of commitment to action on global warming following the landmark decision of Massachusetts v. EPA last spring. That decision held that EPA had “statutory authority” to regulate emissions, and that the Department of Transportation’s authority to set mileage standards “in no way licenses EPA to shirk its duty to protect the public ‘health’ and ‘welfare’.”

Yet recent events point to the EPA reversing course on regulating global warming emissions from vehicles. While a proposed standard has cleared all EPA reviews, and was sent to DOT in December, reports have surfaced that all work on the EPA rule has ceased following the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which raised fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 and increased the production of renewable fuels to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

These new reports of inaction follow EPA’s recent denial of California’s request to go ahead with their own regulation of global warming pollution from vehicles, with the EPA citing the new fuel economy standards as the reason for denying California’s waiver to proceed.

“While these new fuel economy standards make great strides in reducing global warming pollution, they in no way relieve the administration from doing their duty to set a national global warming standard,” said Chairman Markey. “The EPA can’t just throw these vehicle emissions rules in the trunk and think they are out of sight, out of mind. We need clear answers on where they are in the process, and when the American people can expect real action from the agency dedicated to protecting the public health.”

The letter asks Administrator Johnson to appear before the Select Committee on February 7, 2008, and to be prepared to answer these, and other questions:

--When will EPA release its conclusions regarding whether greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles contribute to pollution that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare?
--Has EPA concluded that passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act in any way impacts EPA’s efforts or obligations regarding the “endangerment” determination, and if so, how?

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