The Fight Plan for Clean Air

The Environmental Protection Agency, about to declare heat-trapping gases to be dangerous pollutants, has embarked on one of the most ambitious regulatory challenges in history. The move is likely to have a profound effect across the economic spectrum, affecting transportation, power plants, oil refineries, cement plants and other manufacturers. It sets the agency on a collision course with carmakers, coal plants and other businesses that rely on fossil fuels, which fear that the finding will impose complex and costly rules. But it may also help the Obama administration’s efforts to push through a federal law to curb carbon dioxide emissions by drawing industry support for legislation, which many companies see as less restrictive and more flexible than being monitored by a regulatory agency. And it will lay a basis for the United States in the negotiations leading up to a global climate treaty to be signed in Copenhagen in December. Once made final, the agency’s finding will pave the way for federal regulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. Earlier this month, the agency proposed creating a greenhouse-gas emissions registry, which would require industries — including oil refineries and cement makers, as well as utilities and pulp and paper manufacturers — to report how much pollution they were emitting. The endangerment proposal is another step...NY Times