How does the EPA finding related to the climate negotiations now under way in Copenhagen, Denmark?
It will allow the Obama administration to present another piece of evidence that the White House is tackling global warming in the absence of new legislation and convince other nations that the U.S. is taking climate change seriously. However, the emission reduction target of 17 percent by 2020 that Obama will propose in Denmark falls short of what European leaders wanted and scientists say is needed to avoid the worst consequences of global warming. The EPA’s endangerment finding in itself produces no pollution reductions without actual regulations—and those have yet to be written. Q: How would the EPA regulate greenhouse gases? A: The agency has plans to do something similar to what it does for other pollutants, by requiring new and expanding factories and power plants to install best-available technology to reduce heat-trapping pollution. For automobiles, it has drafted the first-ever greenhouse gas emissions standards that would require automobiles to be more fuel-efficient than th
