Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, has extended the threat greenhouse gas emissions pose on the environment to the blanket statement that public health is directly compromised as well. This statement was prompted b a Supreme Court ruling that the EPA must determine more specific impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, and relating it more easily to the public, rather than spewing off numbers that many of “the people” don’t quite understand. It is hoped that this statement will bolster the credibility of the Obama administration and the EPA in conjunction, although Jackson remarked after her initial statement that the threat to public health does not “require any immediate regulatory action.” However, the “cap and trade” incentive business policy is still being pushed by the administration, but the EPA will not be able to really being stringent regulations until “endangerment findings” have been released on all six greenhouse gases, to evidence the danger to public health.
I think it’s a little ridiculous that it takes a public statement from the EPA to have to convince the people of the world today, Americans especially, that our everyday actions are actually harmful to people. It’s as if we don’t care about the environment at all, or that the typical person just can’t see past themselves to relate people to the environment. We forget that “environment” is more than just a national park, but rather that it’s where we make our home, from where we derive our resources, how we manage to survive. And by harming it we thus harm ourselves. The worst thing about it is that this statement probably won’t be read by the people who are causing the most harm, by simply remaining unaware of their surroundings and therefore remaining incapable of making any effort to stop the damage. Also, I don’t see the EPA helping the environment very much if it takes obvious statements such as these to even start any proactive activity to setting a cap on emissions. We see the evidence very clearly before us that greenhouse gas emissions lower the quality of our air, cause us to breathe in harmful and disgusting chemicals, and it shouldn’t take an official statement for people to realize that.
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Becca,
ReplyDeleteI think that you are right on this issue. The evidence availible for the supreme court does not need to be found in some study somewhere (which will most likely find that indeed pollutants are harmful to people) they could easily look to the major cities around the world, where pollution causes major respitory illness. They could also look to the major steel producing cities such as Pittsburgh, which at the turn of the last century had to turn on their street lights at noon because the pollution was so bad. While I am sure there were not a lot of studies back then I am sure that common sense would tell anyone that the pollution is harmful to people, not to mention other organisms. This is an example of Politics leaking into the global climate change debate.
I agree also, and while I would like to express some surprise at the lack of the environmental common sense in America, in reality it's not shocking at all. Trying to avoid "bad news" is a typical American trait that has been dangerous in the past, including ignoring information about false speculation prior to the crash of 1929 and rising tensions with Japan in 1941. By following this past precedent, we are hindering our forward movement with issues much like global climate change. The European Union, for example, has accepted the fact that they are likely to be greatly affected by climate change and have therefore offered the most radical proposals at the Copenhagen summit. We as Americans must shift our paradigm about "bad news" and confront problems before they confront us.
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