The EPA has released a report, according to the LA Times, which asserts that global warming is a health threat and details the ways in which global warming can harm the US population and its resources. This is the same EPA that last week put off the regulation of greenhouse gases. Umm, hello?
”There was a general belief that moving forward with a challenge and establishing a precedent in channeling regulation would serve the country better than leaving the challenge to the next administration,” [Former EPA Deputy Associate Administrator Jason] Burnett said in the interview, according to a transcript obtained by the Washington Post. “The chief of staff’s office then appears to have changed its mind.”
How can the administration ignore such a drastic problem?
EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said there was no conflict between the warnings in the report and the agency’s conclusion last week that regulation should be put off.
The problem, he said, is that the agency is still searching for the correct way to address the issue.
“Climate change is a serious problem that our nation needs to address. But we need to address it correctly,” Shradar said.
So basically, when there is questionable evidence that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destructions and Iraq’s ties to Al Queda are smaller than those of neighboring nations, it is okay to make a costly (in economic terms but importantly in terms of human lives) decision to go to war. No thinking through, with years of research and public comment, whether this is the correct way to act. But when the IPCC has demonstrated with sound science many of the causes and effects of global warming, when most other developed nations have accepted the moral imperative to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and when the economic costs and human costs of failing to act will be far greater than any suffered in the ‘war’ on terror, the administration wants time to think it over???? Pathetic.
More reporting on this story in the Washington Post.
