1801 Kalorama Square, NW
Washington, DC 20008
April 7, 2011
The Honorable John A. Boehner
1011 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
235 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Pelosi:
As former EPA Administrator under the Nixon and Ford Administrations, I write you to express my sincere hope that the House of Representatives will reject a bill introduced by Representative Upton, H.R.910, which would fundamentally undermine the Clean Air Act and prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from fulfilling its congressional mandate to protect the health and welfare of the American people. Representative Upton’s bill would effectively overturn both a scientific finding and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirming EPA’s authority and requirement to regulate dangerous greenhouse gas pollutants. This legislation should be opposed.
For 40 years, the Clean Air Act has protected the health and welfare of the American people, saving hundreds of thousands of lives while vastly improving the quality of the air we breathe. These health benefits have consistently been accompanied by economic benefits as well. In spite of the repeated and consistently inflated claims by industry that Clean Air Act regulations would costs jobs and cause economic harm, the economic benefits of the Act have exceeded its costs by between 10 to 100 times over. The most recent EPA study shows that, for every $1 that the American people have invested in the Clean Air Act, they have received $30 in benefits.
Despite this impressive track record, H.R.910 would roll back the protections afforded to the American people by the Clean Air Act. It would prevent the EPA from taking any action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, notwithstanding both the scientific determination that these pollutants endanger human health and welfare and a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, in Massachusetts v. EPA, which affirmed the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and concluded that these emissions “fit well within” the Clean Air Act’s definition of an “air pollutant”.
The EPA’s endangerment finding and the Supreme Court’s ruling were based on conclusions of scientists in both the Obama and George W. Bush Administrations. The underlying science has also been reinforced by the National Academy of Sciences, which has concluded that climate change is real and driven mostly by human activity and has argued for strong, immediate action to limit emissions of greenhouse gases. A vote to pass H.R.910 is a vote to reject this scientific consensus, overturn the Supreme Court’s decision and fundamentally undermine the Clean Air Act. Such an action would fly in the face of a law that Congress passed over 40 years ago and twice reaffirmed, in both 1977 and 1990, each time with overwhelming bipartisan support. Most significantly, it would increase the dangers to the health and welfare of the American people.
Arguments that it should be left to Congress solely to decide how to regulate greenhouse gas pollutants ring hollow, since Congress has consistently failed to take meaningful action in spite of the clear scientific evidence of the dangers these pollutants pose. Arguments that Congress did not mean to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act are inconsistent with the history of the law as it has been applied for the past 40 years and misrepresent Congress’ original intentions in passing the Act. Precisely because existing knowledge of air pollutants and their potential effects was so limited at the time, Congress did not enumerate the pollutants that should or should not be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Rather, Congress broadly defined the term “air pollutant” and relied upon on the scientific experts at EPA to evaluate individual pollutants to determine whether or not they were harmful and met the standard for regulation.
Congress went even further when it amended the Clean Air Act in 1977, emphasizing “the Administrator’s duty to assess risks rather than wait for proof of actual harm” and broadening the criteria for action under the law from “will endanger [human health or welfare]” to “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger”. The intention of Congress in doing so is clear: to empower the EPA to respond to threats that had not yet arisen or had yet to be perceived. The law also specified that sole criterion triggering EPA action was to be a scientific one: whether a pollutant “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger” human health or welfare. Both the science and the law have clearly established that greenhouse gas pollutants meet this basic test.
The House of Representatives should reject H.R. 910 and any similar proposals to undermine the essential protections that the Clean Air Act provides for our collective health and welfare. Members of Congress should also oppose attempts to circumvent the normal legislative process by attaching policy riders to the same effect to appropriations bills that are needed to fund the government. These proposals to roll back Clean Air Act protections are driven not by science but by political considerations – to stall action on an emerging threat and shield elected officials from having to make difficult but necessary decisions. But as Congress itself has made clear, the Clean Air Act was not written to protect politicians; it was written to protect the American people.
I urge the House of Representatives to reject H.R.910 and any other legislative proposals to curtail or delay the ability of the EPA to implement the Clean Air Act and its provisions to protect the health and welfare of all Americans.
Sincerely,
Russell E. Train
EPA Administrator, 1973-1977
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