Report: EPA cut corners on climate finding

The Obama administration cut corners before concluding that climate-change pollution can endanger human health, a key finding underpinning costly new regulations, an internal government watchdog said Wednesday. Regulators and the White House disagreed with the finding, and the report itself did not question the science behind the administration’s conclusions. Still, the decision by the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general is sure to encourage industry lawyers, global warming doubters in Congress and elsewhere, and Republicans taking aim at the agency for what they view as an onslaught of job-killing environmental regulations. The report said EPA should have followed a more extensive review process for a technical paper supporting its determination that greenhouse gases pose dangers to human health and welfare, a finding that ultimately compelled it to issue controversial and expensive regulations to control greenhouse gases for the first time. "While it may be debatable what impact, if any, this had on EPA’s finding, it is clear that EPA did not follow all the required steps," Inspector General Arthur A. Elkins Jr. said in a statement Wednesday...more