EPA Releases Suppressed Bush-Era Global Warming Findings

An Environmental Protection Agency document buried by the Bush administration because of its corroboration of global warming science surfaced, casting doubts on White House environmental efforts between 2000 and 2008.
 
An email and 28-page paper, labeled "Deliberative, Do Not Distribute," show that the EPA concluded in 2007 that gases linked to global warming pose a public threat, especially to air quality, agriculture, wildlife, and water resources, and should be regulated.
 
The EPA finding was rejected by the Bush White House, which opposed the Clean Air Act as a global warming-curbing measure and stalled on producing a Supreme Court-ordered endangerment finding on the risks of unchecked global warming.
 
The document itself was prepared as part of the administration's response to the Supreme Court's April 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, in which the EPA was compelled to move to regulate carbon pollution by twelve U.S. states. Until last week, only select House and Senate investigators had seen the endangerment finding.
 
The Obama administration has broken sharply with the global warming findings and practices of its White House predecessors, determining that carbon pollution endangers public safety and mandating new EPA-drafted emissions standards for motor vehicles and regulation attempts for large emissions sources.

Published: October 22, 2009