The Environmental Protection Agency released a historic finding Monday that greenhouse gases are endangering public health and welfare. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), an outspoken critic of the theory of climate change and of congressional attempts to cut carbon, responded by issuing a statement headlined, "Why the Rush? What's to Hide?" We have a different question for the EPA: Why has it taken so long? In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases were pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, and it directed the EPA to determine whether they represented a health threat that would require federal regulation. Thus began more than a year and a half of foot-dragging by the Bush administration, which had reams of data pointing out the clear dangers of climate change but refused to take action. The EPA is hardly rushing to judgment by finally obeying the law and acknowledging the overwhelming worldwide consensus that carbon-fueled climate change threatens human health. Global warming is expected to cause deaths related to adverse temperatures, greater incidence of disease, worsened air quality, rising sea levels, more intense weather events and food and water shortages, among other things. These are not the conclusions of a handful of conspiracy-minded scientists at a British university, as climate skeptics would have people believe; the EPA's finding was based primarily on the work of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Research Council.
via latimes.com
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