EPA signals carbon regulations could be introduced within months

Democrats pushing for the proposed Waxman-Markey bill to be approved by the Senate could soon have an important new bargaining chip, after the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signalled this week that it would soon formally declare that carbon dioxide constitutes a dangerous pollutant.

The long-awaited decision was trailed back in April when the EPA released an "endangerment finding" for public review, which ruled that carbon dioxide and six other greenhouse gases represent a threat to public health and could therefore be regulated under the existing Clean Air Act.

The 60-day public review period has since been completed and the EPA could now formally adopt the endangerment finding at any time – a move that would oblige the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Speaking at a press conference earlier this week, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told reporters that the "endangerment finding" was likely to be formally adopted within the next few months, providing the legal basis for wide-ranging federal carbon regulations.

The decision is likely to bring the EPA into conflict with a number of business groups, including the US Chamber of Commerce, which has controversially called for a public hearing on the science used to justify the "endangerment finding" intended to effectively put evidence of man-made climate change on trial.

The Democrat top brass have said they would prefer to have carbon regulated through new legislation in the form of the Waxman-Markey bill. However, the bill is facing staunch opposition from Republicans and some Democrat senators from states with carbon-intensive industries.

Green groups are hopeful that the prospect of carbon being regulated regardless of the fate of the Waxman-Markey bill will encourage some wavering Democrats to support the bill.

Jackson said that she too favoured the introduction of a dedicated climate change bill as the most effective means of curbing emissions. "Legislation is so important because it will combine the most efficient, most economy-wide, least costly [and] least disruptive way to deal with carbon dioxide pollution," she said. "We get further faster without top-down regulation."

But she insisted that the EPA would continue to pursue the endangerment finding option after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases qualified as pollutants and could theoretically be regulated if their contribution to climate change were deemed to qualify them as a threat to public health.

Jackson's comments came as Democrat leaders confirmed that the latest version of the Waxman-Markey bill would not be presented to the Senate until late September.

The bill had originally been anticipated next week, but senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry said they would delay the introduction of the bill until " later in September" as a result of the death of senator Edward Kennedy, Kerry's recent hip surgery, and his involvement in the debate over Obama's healthcare reforms as part of the Senate Finance Committee.