EPA's Own Warnings Can’t Turn U.S. Climate Denial into Action

Last week, the U.S. EPA released a grim, 284-page study (pdf) that concluded that climate change will cause "substantial" threats to the health of the American public.

And yet, one week prior to the report’s release, the agency ruled that it will not regulate harmful greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, ignoring its own warnings that emissions will endanger the public welfare.

It shouldn’t have. Excerpts from the EPA’s own findings:

It is very likely that heat-related morbidity and mortality will increase over the coming decades.

The impacts of higher temperatures in urban areas and likely associated increases in tropospheric ozone concentrations can contribute to or exacerbate cardiovascular and pulmonary illness if current regulatory standards are not attained.

Hurricanes, extreme precipitation resulting in floods, and wildfires also have the potential to affect public health through direct and indirect health risks.

There will likely be an increase in the spread of several food and water-borne pathogens among susceptible populations.

Changes in precipitation patterns will affect water supplies nationwide, with precipitation varying across regions and over time. Likely reductions in snowmelt, river flows, and groundwater levels, along with increases in saline intrusion into coastal rivers and groundwater will reduce fresh water supplies.

The findings emerged from a heavy evaluation of climate change science. Says the EPA:

The impact assessments in this report...rely on the existing scientific literature with respect to our understanding of climate change and its impacts on human health, settlements and human well-being in the United States.

But politics trumps science at the U.S. EPA, clearly. The agency delivers an eye-popping warning on the dangers of climate change to the human health of American citizens, and zilch -- nothing to turn Washington's entrenched climate denial into action.

Here's even more startling evidence of this sad state of affairs. From a new report by the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming:

An investigation by the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has found that members of government at the highest levels, including the office of President George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff and numerous heads of Cabinet departments, had decided to use the Clean Air Act to regulate global warming emissions not only from vehicles, but also from power plants, refineries, and other so-called stationary sources – but reversed their decision in the face of strong opposition from ExxonMobil and others within the oil industry, as well as from at least one senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Grossly arrogant, stunning and ridiculous.

Question now becomes: what's next?

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