Tag: legislate

From Health Care to Climate

  • Congressional leaders are beginning to start thinking about a climate bill again.

Health care legislation has finally started
moving forward in Congress. Shawn Allee reports
the US Senate can now devote some attention to
its unfinished work on climate change:

Transcript

Health care legislation has finally started moving forward in Congress.

Shawn Allee reports the US Senate can now devote some attention to its unfinished work on climate change:

The climate-change bill got a cold reception last year, but Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman say they’re making headway lately.

Margaret Kriz Hobson tracks climate legislation for the National Journal.
She says the Senate got stuck negotiating a complex carbon trading scheme.
That would have required most industries to trade carbon pollution credits.

Kriz Hobson says the three senators are now focusing mostly on power companies.

“A lot more people are letting them in the door because the proposal that they’re bringing forward would include some benefits for nuclear power, oil drilling in the United States and for more modern technologies for capture and sequestration.”

That last technology would basically bury carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.

That could save money and jobs in states that burn or mine coal.

For the Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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The EPA and CO2 Regulations

  • This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Graph courtesy of NASA and NOAA)

The Environmental Protection Agency
is trying to figure out how it might
regulate greenhouse gases. Lester
Graham reports language in the
Clean Air Act is not helping:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency
is trying to figure out how it might
regulate greenhouse gases. Lester
Graham reports language in the
Clean Air Act is not helping:

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the EPA to decide whether greenhouse gases are pollutants. The EPA is making the case that they are.

But setting rules to reduce those emissions is problematic.

The Clean Air Act says it you emit 250-tons a year of a pollutant, you need a pollution permit. 250-tons of CO2 a year is not a lot.

Jeff Holmstead worked in the EPA on air pollution issues during the last Bush Administration. Now, he’s a lawyer with the Washington DC firm Bracewell and Giuliani.

“You know, 250-tons of CO2 according to EPA would include most schools, most apartment buildings, any kind of commercial building. It just isn’t possible to develop permits for all of these sources.”

So the EPA plans to raise the amount to 25,000-tons. But, that’s not what the Clean Air Act says.

That’s one reason why the Obama Administration prefers a climate change law passed by Congress.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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