The more the public learns about the EPA's "endangerment" finding on global warming, the more alarmed it may become. And the more reason it has to.
The endangerment finding says, in essence, that greenhouse gases threaten public health. The finding allows the agency to regulate them. In a recent court filing the EPA said that applying the Clean Air Act, as written, to carbon emissions by 2016 would be "absurd" and "impossible," could cost $21 billion — more than twice the agency's current budget — and could require hiring more than 200,000 more employees to help carry out the task.
That's why the EPA is asking for a "tailoring" rule that would let it focus on only the largest polluters at first. Whether the law permits such selective enforcement is for the courts to decide.
Now comes news that the EPA's inspector general says the agency cut corners to reach its endangerment finding. The report does not say the science underlying the endangerment finding is flawed — only that the agency did not give it the rigorous scrutiny and peer review that it should have.
When corporations pull stunts like this, foes quickly point out that, regardless of the actual science involved, industry-funded studies have a suspicious tendency to produce results conducive to padding company profits. Likewise, it's highly convenient that the EPA cut corners to produce an endangerment finding whose application would effectively triple the agency's budget.
Big Tobacco and Big Oil might be the reigning champs at self-serving science — but it looks as if Big Government catches on fast.
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