Officials gather in Copenhagen this week for an international climate summit, but business leaders are focusing even more on Washington, where the Obama administration is expected as early as Monday to formally declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant.
An “endangerment” finding by the Environmental Protection Agency could pave the way for the government to require businesses that emit carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to make costly changes in machinery to reduce emissions — even if Congress doesn’t pass pending climate change legislation. EPA action to regulate emissions could affect the U.S. economy more directly, and more quickly, than any global deal inked in the Danish capital, where no binding agreement is expected.
Many business groups are opposed to EPA efforts to curb a gas as ubiquitous as carbon dioxide.
An EPA endangerment finding “could result in a top-down command-and-control regime that will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major construction and renovation project,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement. “The devil will be in the details, and we look forward to working with the government to ensure we don’t stifle our economic recovery,” he said, noting that the group supports federal legislation.
EPA action won’t do much to combat climate change, and “is certain to come at a huge cost to the economy,” said the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade group that stands as a proxy for U.S. industry.
Forbidding CO2 emissions will do nothing to effect climate change.
Even if it did, climate change is based on far more than factories spewing CO2 … based far more on cyclical solar activity, for example.
No, regulating CO2 emissions is simply a way for Big Government to control the private business sector. Socialism.
And listing carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant? Wouldn’t that make God a complete idiot, since all human and animal life forms on the planet spew CO2 with every breath they take? Would that make all humans biological weapons? While talking with someone else would you be a criminal guilty of assault for breathing (and expelling CO2) into their face?
Obama, carbon dioxide, Environmental Protection Agency, greenhouse gas, climate change
