Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act Under Fire
While working with communities is core to Pacific Environment, we also need to build from those efforts and strengthen our support of critical environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act — both of which are currently under threat.
The EPA, which enforces the Clean Air Act (CAA), is under attack from special interests and their representatives in Congress. Special interests are advocating removal of the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the CAA, which they won in the Supreme Court in 2007. Currently, there are two bills in Congress that would slow or kill the EPA’s new regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Two West Virginia Democrats, Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Rep. Nick Rahall, have co-authored a bill that would freeze the agency’s move for at least two years and “protect clean coal state economies.” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska introduced a bill that would undo the EPA’s ruling that greenhouse gas emissions pose public harm. The state of Texas is also challenging the EPA’s attempts to regulate greenhouse gases claiming that the agency’s finding that “gases blamed for global warming threaten public health” is “based on flawed science and would harm the state’s economy.”
We need to be working towards ensuring that any attempts to weaken the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act are struck down. This is a great tool that can be used to help stop global warming and ultimately protect the people of the Arctic (and the rest of the United States) along with their subsistence way of life.
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is equally critical and similarly under attack from Washington interests. Challenges to the ESA are materializing on all fronts: administrative, congressional, judicial and state. Secretary of the Interior Salazar upheld Bush administration policies forbidding the use of the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, though Salazar explicitly has blamed those emissions for the habitat erosion that landed the polar bear on the list of threatened species in 2008. This decision is currently being challenged in the courts and hopefully the polar bears will prevail. Senators Murkowski and Begich along with Congressman Young from Alaska are speaking out against the Endangered Species Act, and proposed critical habitat designations of the beluga whale in Cook Inlet along with proposed decisions to list ice seals claiming that the Endangered Species Act will harm Alaska’s economy. The state of Alaska has also mounted a campaign to rid itself of Endangered Species Act regulation by hiring an attorney who will specifically fight ESA listings and by also launching a public relations campaign to convince Alaskans of how bad the ESA is for Alaskan jobs. It is imperative that we do not lose our most valuable pieces of environmental legislation. Without the ESA, the bald eagle, California condor, Florida manatee, grizzly bear, gray wolf and countless other species may have perished from this planet forever.
As people who care about having healthy air, water, and land to live and play on and who want to share that air, water and land with the other species of the planet, we have to speak out in defense of our environmental laws. Tell Senators Murkowski, Rockefeller and Congressman Rahall to leave the EPA alone and let the agency protect our air quality. If you’re a resident of Alaska or Texas or another state you know that is challenging being regulated under the ESA or the CAA, let your governor and state legislator know that you support the EPA’s regulations of automobile emissions in order to curb the disastrous effects of global climate change and that endangered species listings and a healthy economy can coexist. Let your voice be heard and maybe one day we won’t have to shout so loud just to have clean air, water, land and rich biodiverse ecosystems.
Tags: Alaska, Arctic, Bering Sea, climate change, Endangered Species Act, Energy, environment, Global Warming, government agency, offshore drilling
