Preview Newsletter
NI - ACC PM 11/3/2015
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(ACC Mentioned) Uh Oh: Gun Control Push Splitting Democrats ... Again
Nov 3, 2015 | Townhall
By Matt Vespa
It’s no secret that Democrats have a good shot at regaining the majority in the Senate next year. Roll Call reported last summer that the GOP is defending 24 senate seats next year. -
(ACC Mentioned) Advocates Argue EPA Pesticide Screening Approach Fails To Capture Risk
Nov 3, 2015 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Environmentalists are faulting EPA’s draft cumulative risk assessment framework for screening pesticides, saying it underestimates risk rather than focusing on all chemicals that cause a common health effect... -
Why the American Cancer Society Must Take a Stronger Stand on Cancer Prevention
Nov 3, 2015 | Huffington Post
By Karuna Jaggar
For decades, a growing body of scientific evidence has been connecting environmental exposures to increasing rates of breast and other cancers -
A Railroad Safety Technology Was Available Decades Ago
Nov 3, 2015 | New York Times
By Ron Nixon
In 1981, while traveling on a corporate jet, Richard M. Bressler, the chairman of the Burlington Northern Railroad, hit on an idea: What if the technology used by airlines to track the location of planes and help prevent accidents was applied to the rail industry? -
White House Threatens Veto of Bill to Kill Waterways Rule
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Annie Snider
Even if the Senate passes its measure to scrap the Obama administration's controversial water rule, the bill will meet a swift demise at the president's desk, his advisers confirmed today. -
Senate Legislation Would Block EPA Clean Water Rules
Nov 3, 2015 | AP (In the Washington Post)
By Mary Clare Jalonick
The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto a Senate bill that would block new federal rules to protect smaller streams, tributaries and wetlands from pollution and development. -
Lawmakers Employ Radical Tactics against Clean Water
Nov 3, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Gene Karpinski
They’re at it again. Congressional leadership is jumping through legislative hoops on behalf of polluters; both chambers have introduced Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions to nullify the Clean Water Rule that would protect the drinking water of one in three Americans. -
Obama Overhauls Process for Offsetting Environmental Harm
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
President Obama today ordered five federal agencies to streamline regulations for offsetting environmental harm and to promote independent mitigation efforts. -
Senate Dems Urge CEOs to Press for Congressional Action
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
Senate Democrats asked chief executives at 80 major firms today to "not give up on Congress" on climate change. -
Court Sets Deadline in Murray's Ozone Rule Legal Challenge
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Murray Energy Corp. has until the end of the month to lay out the issues behind its challenge to U.S. EPA's new ozone rule. -
Judges Deny Industry Attempts to Topple EPA Designations
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
Federal judges today rejected industry groups' efforts to reverse determinations that areas in Montana and Michigan failed to meet federal air pollution standards. -
D.C. Circuit Backs EPA's Discretion On Designating Areas For SO2 NAAQS
Nov 3, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a unanimous ruling has rejected challenges from industries including the natural resource and steel sectors over EPA's designation... -
Clean Air Act Inefficient, but Best Legal Weapon against Climate Change, Experts Say
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Umair Irfan
The health provision of the Clean Air Act is not the best tool to combat climate change, but it may be the most pragmatic option the United States has, experts say. -
As Scientists Worry About Warming World, US Public Doesn't
Nov 3, 2015 | AP (In the New York Times)
Americans are hot but not too bothered by global warming.
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(ACC Mentioned) Uh Oh: Gun Control Push Splitting Democrats ... Again
Nov 3, 2015 | Townhall
By Matt Vespa
It’s no secret that Democrats have a good shot at regaining the majority in the Senate next year. Roll Call reported last summer that the GOP is defending 24 senate seats next year. If they lose five, they lose the majority, four if Democrats take the White House, and nine of those states Obama won at least once. Yet, the Democratic Party’s push for gun control might be placing moderate Democrats in the cross hairs:
While Democratic senators from liberal states such as Connecticut and Oregon are rolling out new gun control legislation in Washington, some strategists warn the issue could alienate pro-gun voters in swing states states such as Colorado, New Hampshire, Florida, Pennsylvania and Nevada.
[…]
Democratic strategists based in Colorado, however, warn that presidential candidates would pay a price for such talk come general-election time.
“I have a feeling that [Clinton] is wise enough from her Arkansas roots not to come to Denver, Colo., or Colorado Springs and decide what I’m going to do is a major speech on gun control,” said Rick Ridder, a Democratic consultant based in Denver. “She’s got enough political wisdom, and if not somebody will kick the tires off her campaign plane, make sure she doesn’t land here and give that speech.”
Another Colorado-based Democratic strategist said gun control is not a great issue for embattled Democratic candidates such as Bennet.
“I don’t feel like any Democrat needs to run on gun control as a primary concern. There are larger, more pressing issues at play. I don’t think it’s great ground for any Democratic candidate to be spending their time on,” said the strategist, who requested anonymity.
[…]
“It’s going to be a big issue in Nevada no matter what because there’s going to be a background check ballot initiative next November,” said Jon Ralston, Nevada’s most prominent political commentator. “The NRA is already sending out alerts about [Michael] Bloomberg trying to take over Nevada.”
[…]
Steven Vancore, a Democratic strategist based in Tallahassee, Fla., says he doesn’t expect gun control to hurt Rep. Patrick Murphy, the Democrats’ likely nominee for Senate in Florida. Still, he cautioned that the issue could cost him votes among so-called Dixiecrats in the northern part of the state.
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Pennsylvania and New Hampshire are two other Senate swing states with large contingents of pro-gun voters.
“It depends to what extent they push gun control and how it’s viewed. Typically gun control, you have to be very careful about it in the state. It defeated candidates back in the 70s and 80s,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College.
It’s the issue that just keeps on giving, as it splits the party right down the middle–especially when you leave those heavily Democratic and liberal bastions of New York and Connecticut. You would think that after the Democrats’ failed 2013 push for gun control, they would learn to be savvier in pushing this issue. After all, there were a good chunk of Democrats who voted against the 2013 gun control measures, some of which were booted by Republicans in the midterms, or, like Max Baucus, have retired to become Ambassador to China (via WaPo [4/18/13]):
Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.), all of whom voted against every Democratic piece of gun legislation save for a crackdown on trafficking, and for every piece of Republican gun legislation.
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All but Pryor get high marks from the National Rifle Association; he gets a middling C-. Baucus' Montana has more gun businesses than any state in the country; Alaska is not far behind.
Sen. Kay Hagan (N.C.), another vulnerable Democrat up in 2014, voted for background checks, but with Republicans on everything else save gun trafficking. Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.) is in the same boat and voted the same way. So did Sen. Joe Donnelly (Ind.) and Joe Tester (Mont.) who like Heitkamp were elected (or in Tester's case reelected) in conservative states. Sen. Martin Heinrich (N.M.), elected last year to a blue-leaning state, broke with Democrats on the assault weapons ban, concealed-carry and privacy.
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), up next year in a swing state, voted for expanding concealed-carry, against the assault weapons ban and for gun owners' privacy but with Democrats on everything else. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), another swing-state senator up in 2014, only broke with her party on the privacy amendment. Polls suggest Sen. Jeff Merkley could be vulnerable in Oregon; he broke with his party only on gun owners' privacy. On the flip side polls make it hard to believe Sen. Mark Warner will lose in Virginia; he broke with Democrats on concealed-carry, assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and privacy.
Yet, the truth is that liberals haven’t become savvier–and I’m not entirely sold on the notion that the politics on this issue have changed. Support for gun rights has reached its highest point in 25 years, support for handgun bans has reached near record lows, and polls showing support for gun control measures, such as a ban on semi-automatics, should be viewed with a very healthy dose of skepticism. Almost every handgun in the United States is semi-automatic, meaning its operating system self-reloads after every trigger pull. It shows that some Americans, especially liberals, have no clue what they’re talking about.
It highlights the urban/rural divide on this issue that always seems to escape Democrats’ understanding. I’m not complaining. It’s one of the many reasons why we win on Second Amendment issues. Twenty-two percent of Democrats are self-identified gun owners; so if liberals want to denigrate and marginalize almost a quarter of their own party, feel free.
Nevertheless, while this could bring some good popcorn moments, it’s hardly the silver bullet to maintaining the Republican majority. Democrats have had a miserable time recruiting for congressional races, but they’ve found success in mobilizing a somewhat solid cohort of senate candidates for 2016. Republicans know the map for next year is going to be tough, hence why they’ve started to spend early.
Last Note: If there’s any good news about 2016, it’s that incumbent Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) is in decent shape to take on whomever the Democrats nominate to run against him next year (via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette):
Mr. Toomey, who beat [Rep. Joe] Mr. Sestak by just 2 percentage points in 2010, appears well-positioned to face whichever candidate wins next spring. His campaign is already sitting on a war chest of nearly $8.6 million, and outside interests, including the American Chemistry Council and a conservative veterans group, have already been advertising on his behalf.
In August, a Quinnipiac University poll showed Mr. Toomey leading Mr. Sestak and Ms. Ginty by 15- and 16-point margins, respectively. A Franklin & Marshall poll that same month showed Mr. Toomey holding a slightly wider lead over both candidates.
Pennsylvania is one of the states where Republicans cannot lose in order to increase their chances of retaining the Senate. At the same time, given Toomey’s support of gun control, he’s treading carefully on the issue. In a reversal, his gun control support could win over the moderate voters that dot the collar counties around Philadelphia, where elections are decided in the state.
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(ACC Mentioned) Advocates Argue EPA Pesticide Screening Approach Fails To Capture Risk
Nov 3, 2015 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
Environmentalists are faulting EPA’s draft cumulative risk assessment framework for screening pesticides, saying it underestimates risk rather than focusing on all chemicals that cause a common health effect, though industry and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are backing the approach but calling for greater consideration of exposure.
EPA took comment this summer on its July 23 draft “Pesticide Cumulative Risk Assessment: Framework for Screening Analysis Purpose,” which presents a risk-based approach for identifying groups of chemicals for review, but avoids a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) call to shift to an approach based on chemicals’ health outcomes.
In comments recently posted to a federal website, a coalition of advocates, including the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Center for Effective Government and Greenpeace argue that EPA’s Office of Pesticides Programs’ (OPP) approach to grouping chemicals for cumulative risk assessment by chemical properties like mode of action (MOA) rather than health outcomes is flawed. MOA describes the biological steps from exposure to a specific chemical to a health effect.
“Other offices in the EPA are moving forward with efforts to modernize risk assessment by expanding cumulative risk groups beyond MOA,” the coalition of advocates led by NRDC says. The group adds that the pesticides office’s approach is “out of step” with current scientific discourse and practice.
After EPA released the draft screening approach this summer, a former agency official said the document maintains the agency’s past approach of grouping substances for cumulative risk assessment based on their similarities, despite a 2008 call from the NAS to prioritize cumulative risk reviews by focusing on disease or health outcomes.
There is a long-standing debate within the scientific community on whether cumulative risk reviews should begin with a focus on disease or chemical properties, the source said.
In comments on the draft framework, advocates argue that grouping chemicals by common characteristics fails to fully address cumulative risks, and urge the pesticides office to expand its concept of cumulative risk beyond similarities in chemical properties to include all chemicals that contribute to a common health effect.
The advocates, led by NRDC, also argue EPA’s framework should include critical elements of a systematic review process for evaluating and integrating multiple data streams, including a comprehensive literature review, as well as a transparent and repeatable process for evaluating confidence in studies and considering biases.
“The pesticide office is generating risk assessments that fail to reflect the best available science, instead relying almost exclusively on industry-sponsored data,” NRDC says. “Without a systematic review framework that includes study inclusion and exclusion criteria, the pesticide office simply cannot defend its data selections.”
Exposure Considerations
But USDA and industry groups, including pesticide producers group CropLife America and the American Chemistry Council (ACC), are backing the draft framework’s focus on prioritization, calling MOA “critically important,” and urging OPP to expand its consideration of exposure before moving to a full cumulative risk assessment.
In Aug. 28 comments, USDA supports the framework but says a screening-level exposure analysis is also necessary to prioritize, which groups of toxic chemicals, which share an MOA, pose the greatest risk from exposure.
“We remind EPA that even for groups of chemicals whose toxicity is established, a risk to the public can only exist when there is also actual and sufficient human exposure to the chemicals,” USDA says. “Therefore, we suggest that a screening-level exposure analysis be conducted for all candidate and established common mechanism groups before a full cumulative risk assessment is commissioned.”
While also calling for greater consideration of exposure, CropLife also counters NRDC’s arguments, saying that while shared chemical structure and MOA are not sufficient for grouping chemicals, they are an appropriate starting place.
“We support the statements by EPA reaffirming the Agency’s position that common mode of action forms the basis [for grouping chemicals] and not apical outcome or non-specific effects, such as body weight changes,”CropLife says.
Similarly, ACC argues that without consideration of exposure a robust cumulative risk assessment that yields useful results is unlikely. The group also backs EPA’s draft guide as an appropriate, efficient and cost-effective approach to evaluating potential risks, and urges the agency to use a similar approach in all its cumulative risk assessments.
“Once the guidance is finalized, we encourage OPP to work with other EPA offices to educate them on appropriate approaches to” cumulative risk assessment, ACC says. “In an ideal situation, these approaches would be adopted and used to inform development of all EPA [cumulative risk assessments] not just those developed by OPP.”
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Why the American Cancer Society Must Take a Stronger Stand on Cancer Prevention
Nov 3, 2015 | Huffington Post
By Karuna Jaggar
For decades, a growing body of scientific evidence has been connecting environmental exposures to increasing rates of breast and other cancers. There are more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals on the market today, from preservatives in our lipstick to pesticides on our produce. As a population, we are involuntarily exposed to these chemicals--some of which are known toxins, others of which have yet to be studied-- through the food, water, air and products we consume or use each day. As the use of synthetic chemicals has risen in the United States and other industrialized countries, so have cancer rates.
This connection between environmental exposure and increased cancer risks has even prompted officials at the highest level to publicly speak out. Five years ago, the President's Cancer Panel issued a landmark report declaring that "the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated [and]...the American people--even before they are born--are bombarded continually with myriad combinations of these dangerous exposures."
So you would think that the nation's largest cancer charity would be taking a strong stand on toxic chemicals linked to cancer--but unfortunately the opposite is true. Even though the American Cancer Society claims that it's "working to create a world with less cancer," it has consistently failed to take a strong stand on chemical regulations that could help stop the disease before it starts.
Because there is no adequate chemical regulation policy in the United States, companies are allowed to use chemicals in the products we use every day without ever establishing their safety for human use. For many years now, it has fallen to progressive women's health organizations, like Breast Cancer Action, along with other health activist organizations to call for meaningful regulations to end our exposure to chemicals that are known or suspected to cause harm, including increasing our risk of breast cancer.
Over the years, health activists have questioned why the largest cancer charity in the nation has been absent from movements to protect the public from chemicals linked to increased cancer risk. When Breast Cancer Action and other women's health activists were working to pass California's Safe Cosmetics Act, we spoke out about the American Cancer Society's silence on this landmark legislation--and how much the ACS could have helped the cause. Since then, they have been notably silent on all of the major national pushes to better regulate toxins linked to cancer. Instead of taking a strong stand in ensuring that the environment we live in and products we use are safe, the American Cancer Society has been passively sitting out the struggle.
Where the ACS does address chemicals linked to cancer risk, they consistently equivocate, emphasizing that there are no absolute or definitive causal connections to cancer. When it comes to cancer prevention, requiring definitive, unequivocal proof of harm is a grave mistake. Because we are continuously bombarded by a myriad of toxic exposures from birth, it is difficult to definitively prove a causal relationship between X chemical and Y cancer. And we cannot and should not do randomized, controlled experiments on humans - the gold standard of scientific research - to seek definitive proof. A precautionary approach to protecting public health requires us to act on the knowledge we do have, and what we know now about environmental toxins is more than enough for the American Cancer Society take a position in favor of public health.
While the American Cancer Society has been largely observing environmental links to cancer on the sidelines, when it comes to corporate partnerships they are comfortable taking center stage with corporations like Chevrolet and DS Waters of America --both of which produce products that contain chemicals linked to increased risk of breast and other cancers.
One of the American Cancer Society's most egregious partnerships is with the Personal Care Products Council, the cosmetic industry's largest national trade group that has spent millions of dollars lobbying against regulations for chemicals allowed in our cosmetics. Together, they formed a program called Look Good, Feel Better®, which provides beauty tip workshops and complimentary makeup kits to women in cancer treatment. While some women understandably value this support while facing a cancer diagnosis, many of the products offered to women in Look Good, Feel Better kits contain chemicals linked to increased cancer risk, including parabens, Teflon, and formaldehyde releasers. As if that's not bad enough, some of the chemicals in Look Good, Feel Better products, like methylparaben, may actually interfere with breast cancer treatment. For a cancer charity that claims to care about women with breast cancer, this is unacceptable-- especially since the ACS acknowledges on its own website that parabens are a "possible concern."
This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, cancer patients and their loved ones across the country have been calling on the American Cancer Society to refuse to allow companies to participate in the Look Good, Feel Better program if they use chemicals in their products that are linked to increasing cancer risk or interfering with cancer treatment. The American Cancer Society responded that "the benefits of Look Good, Feel Better outweigh the minimal risks." In other words, the country's largest cancer charity is willing to ignore the evidence on environmental toxins and the important work needed to reduce our exposure to chemicals linked to cancer.
As one of the largest voluntary health organizations in the country, the American Cancer Society is in a unique position to take a lead role in protecting the public from chemicals linked to increased cancer risk. Instead, the American Cancer Society focuses mainly on the type of prevention that puts the burden of cancer risk on individual behavior, such as tobacco use, dietary choices, and physical activity, ignoring vital systemic solutions like toxic chemical regulation.
If the American Cancer Society truly wants to work to "create a world with less cancer," they will stand against all the industries that contribute to our toxic environment--rather than working with them and taking their money. The American Cancer Society website states that in this year alone, nearly two million people in the United States are estimated to be diagnosed with cancer and nearly 600,000 will die from the disease. In the face of such devastating numbers, it's time the American Cancer Society cancer-linked chemicals seriously, to protect patients and prevent cancer.
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A Railroad Safety Technology Was Available Decades Ago
Nov 3, 2015 | New York Times
By Ron Nixon
In 1981, while traveling on a corporate jet, Richard M. Bressler, the chairman of the Burlington Northern Railroad, hit on an idea: What if the technology used by airlines to track the location of planes and help prevent accidents was applied to the rail industry?
Mr. Bressler, an engineer by training and a former airline executive, directed a small group of his employees to come up with a similar system for the railroads. The result was a safety system called the Advanced Railroad Electronics System, or ARES, which was soon placed on several trains on a section of track in Minnesota. The system, among other safety features, allowed dispatchers to stop trains automatically if the engineer exceeded speed limits.
But after five years in operation, the project was abruptly shut down in 1993. The company cited the system’s expense and resistance from many managers who did not see how the benefits outweighed the cost of the technology. It calculated that it would have cost about $350 million to install the monitoring hardware and software on the railroad’s entire system, equal to about $580 million today.
On Thursday, President Obama signed a bill giving railroads an additional three years to install a more automated safety technology called positive train control on 60,000 miles of track. Congress passed the measure, which extended a Dec. 31 deadline, after industry executives and some lawmakers said the delays were the result, in part, of an “unproven and untested” safety system.
But internal corporate documents, independent studies and interviews with former Burlington Northern officials show that nearly 30 years ago, the industry had developed a technology that accomplished many of the functions of the modern train safety system.
Since 2004, about 77 deaths and more than 1,400 injuries could have been prevented if railroads had installed a system like positive train control, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. That includes anAmtrak train derailment that killed eight people and injured hundreds more in Philadelphia in May.
“No one is talking about putting a man on the moon or on Mars,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an interview. “We’re talking about a technology that was in place in the 1980s, and the failure to implement it is costing lives.”
The ARES system was rudimentary compared with the system the railroad industry is trying to install today, federal regulators say. Also, the older system was tested on only a few hundred miles of track with just a few trains, the regulators said, so it is not known how it would have worked in high-traffic areas like Chicago. Nevertheless, safety experts say the system proved that a technology to stop trains from colliding was feasible.
“We would have a much safer railroad system today” if the railroad companies had agreed to develop the system, said James T. Hall, who was chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 to 2001.
According to the Association of American Railroads, a trade group, the industry has spent nearly $6 billion to install the safety technology and will spend $4 billion more. The association said that after years of pushing for a delay — spending millions on lobbying and campaign contributions — all of its members were committed to installing the technology on their rail systems.
The association declined to comment on the ARES system, referring questions to the company, now called Burlington Northern Santa Fe. The railroad declined to comment.
ARES was modeled after an air traffic control system then newly developed by Rockwell International for Boeing 757 and 767 jets.
In an interview, Mr. Bressler, 72, now retired and living in the Seattle area, said he had read about the system in a magazine. After finishing the article, he sent a note to senior managers asking, “Any application to locomotives?”
To oversee the project, the company hired Steve Ditmeyer, a former Federal Railroad Administration official.
“I was just there a few weeks, and the note from Mr. Bressler landed on my desk,” Mr. Ditmeyer recalled in an interview. Some months later, after seeing a Jan. 22, 1982, advertisement in The Wall Street Journal promoting Rockwell’s “21st-century avionics for the new generation of jetliners,” he contacted the company.
“I just wrote to them out of the blue,” said Mr. Ditmeyer, who is now a transportation consultant in Virginia and an adjunct professor in the Railway Management Certificate Program at Michigan State University. The company agreed to give it a try.
The resulting system was installed over a 250-mile stretch of track in northern Minnesota’s Iron Range in 1987 and ran as a demonstration project from 1988 to 1992. Seventeen trains hauling coal, grain and taconite ore were fitted with the technology.
Initially, engineers were skeptical, Mr. Ditmeyer said. “We told the engineers not to stop at a signal, don’t touch the breaks or the throttle,” he said. “It worked as advertised. The train would come to a halt. We did that in numerous locations on the track, and the result was always the same.”
After testing the system for several years, Burlington Northern sent a locomotive fitted with the technology to Washington, D.C., to show federal regulators and lawmakers. Federal transportation agencies liked the technology and urged railroads to adopt it. But, with the exception of Amtrak, few supported it.
After Mr. Bressler left Burlington Northern to run a spinoff, interest in the project waned. Other managers at the railroad did not share his enthusiasm for the project.
A 1990 Harvard Business School study of the ARES program showed that managers were sharply divided over its merits. “ARES seems to be technology in search of a problem,” one senior manager told the Harvard researchers.
The system suffered a deathblow when other railroads failed to buy in. Ultimately, managers at Burlington Northern decided that they did not want to go it alone — would it give the company a competitive advantage or disadvantage? — and killed the project in 1993, after spending more than $15 million on it.
Fifteen years later, in 2008, after a commuter train crashed in California, killing 25 and injuring 135, Congress mandated the use of train safety technology to prevent further accidents.
A new report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the vast majority of railroads would not meet the Dec. 31 deadline.
Mr. Bressler said he believed industry opposition in the past had been a factor.
“It’s appalling that things are still done so haphazardly. I think it’s borderline criminal,” he said. “If a system like the one we developed had been used on the Amtrak train in the May accident, it would have shut down the engine and saved lives.”
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White House Threatens Veto of Bill to Kill Waterways Rule
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Annie Snider
Even if the Senate passes its measure to scrap the Obama administration's controversial water rule, the bill will meet a swift demise at the president's desk, his advisers confirmed today.
In a statement of administration policy, White House advisers said the bill, S. 1140, would undo a regulation that is "grounded in science and the law, is essential to ensure clean water for future generations, and is responsive to calls for rulemaking from the Congress, industry, and community stake holders, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court."
The administration also said the legislation, from Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), would be a waste of taxpayer dollars and would raise costs and delays for landowners and businesses seeking Clean Water Act permits.
The move from the White House comes as little surprise -- top Obama administration environmental officials have consistently defended their Waters of the U.S. rule.
But the veto threat is not stopping Senate critics of the rule from pressing ahead, even though they almost certainly lack the 67 votes necessary to override a presidential veto.
During floor debate this morning ahead of a key procedural vote scheduled for this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the water rule "an excuse to extend the reach of the federal bureaucracy as widely and as intrusively as possible."
"The administration's so-called Waters of the U.S. regulation is a cynical and overbearing power grab dressed awkwardly as some clean water measure," he said. "It's not."
Barrasso appealed to farm state Democrats who raised concerns about the proposed version of the rule and hold the key swing votes that could carry the bill across the finish line.
"Whatever concessions the EPA says they made to address some of the serious problems raised by the proposed rule, the EPA added new provisions in the final rule that greatly expand their authority," he said. "Those concerns fell on deaf ears."
The Senate is slated to vote on whether to take up the measure this afternoon. If it is taken up, Barrasso said there will be an open amendment process. If it fails to garner the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster, the chamber is expected to then turn to Sen. Joni Ernst's (R-Iowa) resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act (E&E Daily, Oct. 30) -- which requires only a simple majority vote to pass.
Click here for the statement of administration policy.
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Senate Legislation Would Block EPA Clean Water Rules
Nov 3, 2015 | AP (In the Washington Post)
By Mary Clare Jalonick
The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto a Senate bill that would block new federal rules to protect smaller streams, tributaries and wetlands from pollution and development.
Senators are voting Tuesday on whether to consider the bill. Most Democrats are opposed to the legislation, saying that the Obama administration rules will safeguard drinking water for 117 million Americans and should remain in place. The White House said the regulations are “essential to ensure clean water for future generations.”
Republicans and some Democrats from rural states say they fear a steady uptick in federal regulation of every stream and ditch. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor that the regulations are “a cynical and overbearing power grab dressed awkwardly as some clean water measure.”
It was unclear whether McConnell would have the 60 votes to proceed to consideration of the bill.
Federal courts have already put the rules on hold as they consider a number of lawsuits that were filed immediately after the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued the regulations in May.
The rules clarify which smaller waterways fall under federal protection after two Supreme Court rulings left the reach of the Clean Water Act uncertain. Those decisions in 2001 and 2006 left 60 percent of the nation’s streams and millions of acres of wetlands without clear federal protection, according to the EPA, causing confusion for landowners and government officials.
The EPA says the new rules would force a permitting process only if a business or landowner took steps that would pollute or destroy the affected waters — those with a “direct and significant” connection to larger bodies of water downstream that are already protected. For example, that could include tributaries that show evidence of flowing water.
The Senate bill would force the EPA to withdraw and rewrite the rules. Democratic supporters of the regulations say that would just cause even more confusion.
“We shouldn’t pass legislation that would create even more uncertainty and invite years of litigation,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
The House passed a similar bill earlier this year.
Farm and business groups are among the rules’ chief opponents, and more than half the states have sued the government in an attempt to block them. Officials from states such as Georgia, New Mexico and Wisconsin have suggested the regulations could be harmful to farmers and landowners who might have to pay for extra permits or redesign their property to manage small bodies of water on their private land.
The EPA has argued the criticism is overblown. Since the rules were originally proposed last year, the agency has been working to clear up some misconceptions, like some critics’ assertions that average backyard puddles would be regulated. Current exemptions from the Clean Water Act for farming practices, including plowing, seeding and the movement of livestock, among other things, will continue.
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Lawmakers Employ Radical Tactics against Clean Water
Nov 3, 2015 | The Hill - Congress Blog
By Gene Karpinski
They’re at it again. Congressional leadership is jumping through legislative hoops on behalf of polluters; both chambers have introduced Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions to nullify the Clean Water Rule that would protect the drinking water of one in three Americans.In the Senate, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is leading this assault on our water. What’s more, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is pushing an entirely separate bill that would not just block the Clean Water Rule but would narrow and even re-write the Clean Water Act. We should be wary—Congressional leadership is stockpiling schemes to ambush our clean water.
In May, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers finalized the Clean Water Rule. This rule clarifies the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act: In the last 15 years, two Supreme Court decisions have created confusion over which waterways are protected under the Clean Water Act, leaving more than half of our nation’s streams and 20 million acres of wetlands, which feed into our drinking water, vulnerable to pollution. The Clean Water Rule fixes this confusion.
To develop this rule, the EPA and Army Corps engaged with and solicited feedback from a large swath of stakeholders. They held over 400 meetings and collected over 1 million comments—sportsmen, small businesses, environmentalists, farmers and ranchers, public health groups, religious organizations, and state and local elected officials all had a chance to tell the agencies why they needed them to protect their water. The result was a scientifically sound Clean Water Rule that provides safeguards from pollution for the drinking water of 117 million Americans.
Support for this rule should be straightforward. However, Republican leaders in the Senate have decided to be against clean water, putting forth two bills that would gut the rule and severely limit the reach of the Clean Water Act itself, despite the fact that a federal appeals court has stayed the rule nationwide while the courts decide if the EPA and Army Corps have followed the directions laid out by the Supreme Court.
To start, Barasso’s bill would force the EPA and Army Corps to repeat work they’ve already completed: going back to solicit input from stakeholders they’ve already consulted, considering factors they’ve already considered, and re-proposing a rule, which they’ve already done. This is a remarkable waste of time and taxpayer money. Furthermore, this bill’s vague exemptions and definitions of waterways would narrow the scope of the Clean Water Act, opening up more of our waters to possible pollution.
Next up is the CRA, which is a blunt, extreme tool for blocking federal actions, and no way to legislate. The CRA expedites Congress’ ability to block regulatory rules, but, in nearly two decades of its existence, only once has Congress used it to successfully stop a rule. President Obama has indicated time and again that he’s committed to getting the Clean Water Rule across the finish line, and there is little doubt that he would veto a CRA on the Clean Water Rule. Congressional Republican leadership knows this and that they don’t have the votes to override his decision, yet they continue to waste time on this and Barrasso’s bill.
With these extreme attacks, Senate Republican leadership is demonstrating once again where their loyalties lie: with big polluters, not their constituents, not the 80 percent of voters who favor the Clean Water Rule, not the families, communities, and businesses that rely on clean water.
It’s time for Congress to stand up for our future and protect clean water by opposing these extreme, horrible bills that would not only block the Clean Water Rule but undermine the Clean Water Act itself. Our children and our grandchildren should not be saddled with undrinkable water because big polluters convinced some members of Congress to put their desires ahead of clean water for our families.
Karpinski is the president of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), which works to turn environmental values into national priorities. More information on LCV and its work can be found atwww.lcv.org.
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Obama Overhauls Process for Offsetting Environmental Harm
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Corbin Hiar
President Obama today ordered five federal agencies to streamline regulations for offsetting environmental harm and to promote independent mitigation efforts.
The memorandum -- sent to the secretaries of Defense, Interior and Agriculture and the administrators of U.S. EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- establishes for the first time a "net benefit goal" for natural resource use.
At minimum, the memo calls for no net loss of land, water, wildlife and other ecological resources from federal actions or permitting.
To reach that goal, Obama said the agencies should "adopt a clear and consistent approach for avoidance and minimization of, and compensatory mitigation for, the impacts of their activities and the projects they approve."
The agencies, he said, should also use landscape- or watershed-scale planning to take the full impacts of their decisions into account and to pick the best spots for mitigation.
Whenever possible, such mitigation should occur ahead of projected impacts, provide additional benefits to those that would have already occurred and rely on proven methods, the memo says.
"Agencies are encouraged to pay particular attention to opportunities to promote investment by non-profit and private sectors in restoration or enhancement of natural resource," Obama wrote.
One example of successful mitigation highlighted by the White House's Council on Environmental Quality was a 23,000 acre wetland bank established earlier this year in northern Minnesota by Ecosystem Investment Partners. The Baltimore-based company will restore bogs drained for farming to their original wetland state and then sell credits to offset wetlands development in other parts of the state, according to a Duluth News Tribune story included in the CEQ blog post.
CEQ Managing Director Christy Goldfuss predicted that the certainty and incentives called for in the memo would "lead to bigger markets and more conservation success. This investment will expand the estimated 125,000 jobs and $9.5 billion in direct economic activity already engaged in restoration of natural resources in the U.S.," she wrote.
But some lands, waters or wildlife should be recognized as "of such irreplaceable character that minimization and compensation measures, while potentially practicable, may not be adequate or appropriate," the presidential memorandum says. As a result, "agencies should design policies to promote avoidance of these resources."
The memo also calls for increased "public transparency in the implementation of their mitigation policies and guidance." Specifically, there should be measurable performance standards at the project and program level and clear identification of which parties are responsible for which aspects of a mitigation plan.
Going forward, the president directed the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service to develop and implement additional manual and handbook guidance on mitigation within 180 days. Those policies should be finalized within two years.
At Interior, the Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service each have a year to finalize their mitigation policies. Fish and Wildlife was also ordered to create an additional policy for compensatory mitigation under the Endangered Species Act and more guidance for actions states, landowners and others can take to conserve species ahead of federal protections.
The memo also clearly states that it is "intended for the internal guidance of the executive branch and is inapplicable to the litigation or settlement of natural resource damage claims."
Environmentalists were quick to praise the memo, which has been in the works for many months (Greenwire, Sept. 24).
"The White House is setting a new precedent that human needs for food, fuel and fiber must not come at the expense of the environment," Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp said in a statement. "The President is creating a path for economic and environmental prosperity because he understands that, as our nation's industries grow and thrive, we must also protect and enhance the natural systems that sustain us.
"In calling for landscape-scale approaches, market-based solutions, and net benefit to our nation's land, water and wildlife, the presidential memorandum will ensure that economic development spurs environmental growth, and vice versa."
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Senate Dems Urge CEOs to Press for Congressional Action
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Amanda Reilly
Senate Democrats asked chief executives at 80 major firms today to "not give up on Congress" on climate change.
Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the 10 senators told the companies that they supported the companies making corporate commitments to address climate change but that Congress could still play a key role in meeting climate goals.
"Please, don't 'abandon all hope, ye who enter here,'" the senators wrote in a letter. "There is a critical mass of support in the country and even in Congress to tackle this climate crisis."
Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Al Franken of Minnesota, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Gary Peters of Michigan also signed the letter.
The letter was addressed to the 80 companies that have signed on to the White House's "American Business Act on Climate Pledge" launched in July. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/10/19/fact-sheet-white-house-announces-commitments-american-business-act Firms signing the pledge have agreed to voice support for a strong international agreement at the upcoming climate change talks in Paris as well as take action individually to reduce their environmental footprints.
It comes as members in the House and Senate are taking up resolutions and legislations to halt the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's climate change agenda, ahead of the upcoming Paris talks.
The senators praised the firms for signing the pledge but acknowledged that the commitments "have yet to resonate" with many in Congress. They urged industry and business trade organizations to adopt policy positions that reflected the White House pledge's commitments.
"Too often the voices of strong corporate leaders are contradicted by the trade associations of which they are a part," the senators wrote. "Corporate lobbying groups need to change their policy positions on climate if they are to reflect the opinions of members who are committed to climate action."
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Court Sets Deadline in Murray's Ozone Rule Legal Challenge
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Sean Reilly
Murray Energy Corp. has until the end of the month to lay out the issues behind its challenge to U.S. EPA's new ozone rule.
And any dispositive motions, such as a request for dismissal, from either side would be required by Dec. 14 under a timetable for initial filings set by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The schedule, contained in an order issued late last week, defers briefs in the case until later.
Ohio-based Murray, the nation's largest privately owned coal company, filed the petition for review on Oct. 26, the same day EPA published 70 parts per billion as its final choice for the new national ambient air quality standard for ozone, a key component in smog formation (E&ENews PM, Oct. 26). That number, while at the upper end of a proposed range, is a modest drop from the 75 ppb threshold set in 2008 during President George W. Bush's administration.
EPA's publication of the new standard started the clock on a 60-day deadline for legal challenges. Murray's suit, likely to be the first of many, was followed the next day by a challenge from the states of Arizona, Arkansas, North Dakota, Oklahoma and New Mexico (Greenwire, Oct. 28).
On Friday, the appellate court issued an identical schedule for initial filings in that case.
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Judges Deny Industry Attempts to Topple EPA Designations
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Greenwire
By Robin Bravender
Federal judges today rejected industry groups' efforts to reverse determinations that areas in Montana and Michigan failed to meet federal air pollution standards.
In two separate cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, industry groups challenged U.S. EPA's 2013 determinations that parts of Yellowstone County, Mont., and Wayne County, Mich., were in violation of the agency's standard for sulfur dioxide.
But the three-judge panel today denied both attempts to upend EPA's designations in itsopinion filed today for the consolidated cases.
Lawyers representing the industry groups argued in September that EPA had used faulty monitoring data in Montana and inaccurately drew the lines of the nonattainment areas in Michigan. States are required to slash air pollution in areas that violate air pollution standards, often by forcing industries to install pollution controls (Greenwire, Sept. 16).
In August 2013, EPA designated 29 areas nationwide as not attaining its 2010 sulfur dioxide standard of 75 parts per billion. SO2 is emitted from power plants and other industrial facilities and can cause respiratory problems.
In the Montana case, lawyers representing the Treasure State Resource Industry Association argued that EPA relied on unreliable data and retroactively used data from 2009 to make a nonattainment designation under a 2010 regulation.
But the judges said the industry groups' arguments fell short. "There was nothing unreasonable in EPA's determination that the data from the monitor were 'robust enough to be reliable' for the 2010" standard," Senior Judge Stephen Williams, a Republican appointee, wrote in the court's opinion.
As to the retroactivity arguments, Williams wrote, "The [Clean Air] Act and EPA's enforcement strategy made it highly likely that data pre-dating the final adoption of the new [air quality standards] would be critical in causing some areas to be designated nonattainment and to incur those burdens." That's in part because EPA decided to measure compliance with a three-year average of various one-hour readings and because EPA is required to make final designations within three years of issuing a new standard.
And, the court said, industries could have anticipated stricter limits, as "EPA had long given notice of the prospect of more stringent SO2 regulations."
"While of course divining the specifics of EPA's decision would have been impossible, firms had years of notice that more stringency was possible," Williams wrote. "Accordingly, any investment decisions taken in the expectation of stasis would not have qualified as having been made in reasonable reliance on preexisting law."
In the Michigan case, U.S. Steel Corp. argued that the boundaries of EPA's nonattainment area for Wayne County should be extended to include the largest SO2 emitter in the region, DTE Energy Co.'s coal-fired Monroe power plant in neighboring Monroe County.
If that plant were included, U.S. Steel would presumably not have to cut its emissions by as much. U.S. Steel said it was illegal for EPA to designate Wayne County without simultaneously designating the area containing the Monroe plant.
But the court found that EPA hadn't violated the Clean Air Act or acted arbitrarily.
"EPA issued guidance to the states for making their initial recommendations, indicating that 'the perimeter of a county containing a violating monitor would be the initial presumptive boundary for nonattainment areas.' ... Nothing in the Act or its associated regulations prevents EPA from presumptively following county boundaries," Williams wrote.
He added that EPA offered many reasons to justify postponing a decision on Monroe County and that the agency reasonably asserted a need for further study on the effect of new emission controls on the Monroe plant.
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D.C. Circuit Backs EPA's Discretion On Designating Areas For SO2 NAAQS
Nov 3, 2015 | InsideEPA
By Stuart Parker
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in a unanimous ruling has rejected challenges from industries including the natural resource and steel sectors over EPA's designation of some areas as out of attainment with the sulfur dixoide (SO2) ambient air limit, bolstering the agency's discretion on how to issue such designations.
The Nov. 3 decision, written by D.C. Circuit Senior Judge Stephen Williams on behalf of fellow Judges Thomas Griffith and Patricia Millett, addresses two unrelated challenges to designations for the 2010 SO2 national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) of 75 parts per billion. The first suit was filed by industry over a nonattainment listing for part of Yellowstone County, MT, and the other by U.S. Steel over a Michigan designation.
“We deny the petitions for review. Except insofar as both are attacks on EPA’s August 2013 designations with respect to the 2010 SO2 NAAQS, the two claims have virtually nothing in common,” the ruling says.
Nonattainment status carries with it the requirement for states to impose tougher and likely costly regulation on industrial sources of criteria pollutants such as SO2, which EPA's critics say harms local economies.
In both cases, Williams writes that the petitioners have failed to show that EPA's technical approach to issuing the designations in August 2013 was unreasonable or arbitrary, and therefore he rejects the suits. Under the Clean Air Act, petitioners must show that EPA's action was “arbitrary and capricious” in order to overturn it.
The court in the consolidated case Treasure State Industry Association v. EPA first addressed the Montana suit filed by the Treasure State industry coalition seeking to overturn the nonattainment designation of part of Yellowstone County. The court notes the coalition includes the natural resource industries, labor unions, and others.
The court finds that EPA's approach to data gathering and evaluation in the Montana challenge was reasonable. It further rejects Treasure State's argument that EPA used unlawfully retroactive regulation when it issued a nonattainment designation based on air quality data gathered before the issuance of the 75 ppb SO2 NAAQS in 2010. Williams argues that there is no inherent unfairness in EPA's decision, as, for example, no industrial facilities were built shortly before the NAAQS' release based on the expectation that NAAQS would not get tougher in the future.
“While of course divining the specifics of EPA’s decision would have been impossible, firms had years of notice that more stringency was possible. Accordingly, any investment decisions taken in the expectation of stasis would not have qualified as having been made in reasonable reliance on preexisting law,” Williams writes.
The ruling also rejects Treasure State's argument that EPA wrongly ignored newer air quality data when making its nonattainment designation. Williams says, “There are at least two problems with this claim. First, the 2013 data were not complete or certified at the time that the Association suggested that they be used. And using only data for 2010-2012 would not have undone the county’s violation of the NAAQS.”
Further, “a ruling that an agency’s disregard of data gathered after final agency action was arbitrary and capricious could make it difficult for many actions to go into effect,” Williams says, arguing that the agency has to draw the line and take final action somewhere, even as new data continues to “pour in.”
Nonattainment Challenge
The court then shifts to the challenge filed by steelmaker U.S. Steel, seeking to expand a nonattainment area around its Wayne County, MI, plant to include a power plant in neighboring Monroe County, MI.
In U.S. Steel's unusual challenge, the company seeks not to avoid nonattainment, but to widen the nonattainment area and thereby spread the burden of compliance to the nearby power plant, which U.S. Steel says is partially responsible for the failure of Wayne County to meet the SO2 NAAQS.
Williams says the air law “gives a kind of primacy to reductions from sources in the nonattainment area itself, and we have read it as sharply prioritizing reductions inside the nonattainment area.”
Even if U.S. Steel could reasonably argue that including the Monroe County power plant in a wider nonattainment area would ease the regulatory burden on the steel maker -- and this point is contested by the parties -- Williams says EPA's argument that its designation for the area is not a final agency action subject to judicial review is reasonable.
EPA says it is still conducting a technical evaluation of the pollution contributing to NAAQS attainment problems in Wayne County. “EPA has offered many reasons that justify its decision to defer a decision on Monroe County. Most importantly, there was uncertainty over whether pollution from Monroe County is, in fact, substantially contributing to air quality in Wayne County.”
Williams says nothing in the Clean Air Act requires that Monroe County be designated nonattainment at the same time as a neighboring area if Monroe County is in attainment according to air quality monitoring.
“Assuming that the portion of Monroe County containing the Monroe plant may ultimately be found to contribute to nonattainment in Wayne County, nothing in the definition requires a simultaneous decision on both counties,” the opinion says.
The decision marks another win for the agency in a D.C. Circuit air law case. Speaking at an air law conferenceorganized by the American Law Institute-Continuing Legal Education in Washington, D.C., Oct. 23, EPA Deputy General Counsel Ethan Shenkman said that EPA by its own terms has won 12 of 14 air law suits heard by the court in 2015.
Meanwhile, litigation continues in the D.C. Circuit over the broader question of whether EPA had the right to defer its designation of much of the country for the SO2 NAAQS by years beyond air law schedules. EPA fell behind schedule because of the need to establish a new monitoring network to assess compliance, and was sued by both environmentalists and a coalition of industry and states seeking faster designations.
EPA reached a settlement with environmental groups allowing final designations by December 2020, but inSierra Club et al. v. EPA, several states led by Arizona are appealing the settlement in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. In that case, they are claiming that the decree violates the air law's statutory timetable and that EPA must issue designations of “unclassifiable” -- hence avoiding nonattainment -- for areas it lacks sufficient information to designate
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Clean Air Act Inefficient, but Best Legal Weapon against Climate Change, Experts Say
Nov 3, 2015 | E&E - Climatewire
By Umair Irfan
The health provision of the Clean Air Act is not the best tool to combat climate change, but it may be the most pragmatic option the United States has, experts say.
Protecting hearts and lungs is the pillar of the Obama administration's argument for cutting greenhouse gases under the Clean Power Plan, which draws on Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, a provision that directs U.S. EPA to regulate pollutants that harm health (ClimateWire, June 3, 2014)
The idea is that many of the things that produce carbon dioxide also produce other dangerous products like ozone and particulates, so curbing emissions has both short- and long-term benefits for public health.
However, the Clean Air Act appears to be a cumbersome way to address this problem.
"The Clean Air Act is a highly technical and complex statute," said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School.
Speaking yesterday at the American Public Health Association's annual conference, Burger explained that the links between spreading infections and deadly heat waves to a changing climate are robust, but the legal framework to tackle this problem remains weak.
"It wasn't really created to address climate change," Burger said.
Reducing carbon pollution is a global challenge and requires international coordination, but the Clean Air Act focuses on state and regional regulations. The law doesn't address land-use changes, adaptation, low-income relief and other practicalities of addressing climate change.Tension between global and local solutions
However, politically, the Clean Air Act may be the most practical option. With dim prospects for new environmental rules passing Congress, the executive branch is exerting authority granted under existing statutes.
"The last significant piece of environmental legislation in this country was enacted 26 years ago, and was in fact an amendment to the Clean Air Act," Burger said. "It wasn't a new piece of legislation. It was creating the acid rain trading program to deal with that particular problem."
Sara Hoverter, a senior fellow for health and climate at the Harrison Institute for Public Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, added that addressing climate change requires local public health agencies to think globally, so they may have to reassess their priorities.
"We have a tension here between trying to solve a global problem while at the same time trying to address local problems," Hoverter said.
As some states gear up to challenge the Clean Power Plan in court, Hoverter said public health officials need to participate in crafting climate rules.
"Public health is going to be dealing with the consequences of all of these decisions," she said. "It only makes sense to be there at the table in the first place to try to make them good decisions."
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As Scientists Worry About Warming World, US Public Doesn't
Nov 3, 2015 | AP (In the New York Times)
Americans are hot but not too bothered by global warming.
Most Americans know the climate is changing, but they say they are just not that worried about it, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. And that is keeping the American public from demanding and getting the changes that are necessary to prevent global warming from reaching a crisis, according to climate and social scientists.
As top-level international negotiations to try to limit greenhouse gas emissions start later this month in Paris, the AP-NORC poll taken in mid-October shows about two out of three Americans accept global warming and the vast majority of those say human activities are at least part of the cause.
However, fewer than one in four Americans are extremely or very worried about it, according the poll of 1,058 people. About one out of three Americans are moderately worried and the highest percentage of those polled — 38 percent — were not too worried or not at all worried.
Despite high profile preaching by Pope Francis, only 36 percent of Americans see global warming as a moral issue and only a quarter of those asked see it as a fairness issue, according to the poll which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
"The big deal is that climate has not been a voting issue of the American population," said Dana Fisher, director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland. "If the American population were left to lead on the issue of climate, it's just not going to happen."
Linda Gebel, a 64-year-old retired bookkeeper who lives north of Minneapolis, has read up on global warming.
"Everybody's life would be totally disrupted," Gebel said. "It will cause famines and wars, huge problems. I don't know why people wouldn't be worried about it."
And yet because she lives in the middle of the country — joking that she'll be "the last one who will be submerged" — Gebel added she doesn't "feel worried personally. I'm not sure this is going to happen in my lifetime, but I worry about my children. I worry about my grandchildren."
The "lukewarm" feeling and lack of worry has been consistent in polling over the years, even as temperatures have risen, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
"The issue hasn't quite boiled up enough so that people have put it on the top of things they want to focus on," Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said.
One issue is how big, yet distant the problem seems and how abstract it can be, Fisher said. It can cause people to put off worrying about it.
Renata Schram, a 43-year-old customer service representative in Sturgis, Michigan, says she believes global warming is real and is mostly caused by people, but she is only moderately worried.
"On my list of things that worry me today, global warming is kind of low," she said. The world's violence is a far more pressing issue, she says.
"Usually when we hear about global warming everything seems so distant," she said. "The sea levels are going to rise but I find it difficult to find a prediction that tells you how many years exactly."
White House science adviser John Holdren said climate contrarians emphasize how large the problem is, essentially telling people "the result (of warming) is too scary, so let's not believe it." He said these groups have been "incredibly effective in sowing doubt" about global warming.
For his part, Myron Ebell, a policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the elites on the coast may be concerned about global warming but people in the heartland who dig stuff up, grow stuff or make stuff are used to the vagaries of extreme weather. "They don't see it as much of a problem" because it isn't, he said.
Not so, said scientists.
"We are all vulnerable to the impacts," climate scientist Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution said. "If you are a farmer in Illinois or if you work on a railroad in Alabama or are a miner in West Virginia, there are impacts that are going to affect your life, your health and what you're going to pay for things in the grocery story."
Scientists, however, aren't communicating their worries well, figuring that issuing more reports and data will convince people, said climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe of Texas Tech, who reaches out to the evangelical Christian community. Success lies in finding common ground in humanity, she said.
"More facts are not going to fix the problem," Hayhoe told a meeting of top climate scientists last week in Washington. "Nearly every human on the planet has the values they need to care about climate change. We just need to connect the dots."
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