EPA Quietly Releases Report on Health Impacts of Climate Change
Published 21 Jul 2008, 9:38 am -
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Last week a government agency released a report concluding that climate change will pose “substantial” threats to human health in the coming decades. What was striking about the report was not its conclusion, which is hardly news, rather the quiet manner in which the report was released and its recommendation to do essentially nothing. The Climate Change Science Program at the Environmental Protection Agency released its report summarizing the current scientific consensus on climate change health effects after months of stalling. According to Climate Science Watch at the Government Accountability Project, the results of the new report ought to be critical to the EPA’s own “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases. Last year the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. But EPA head Steve Johnson has dismissed the ruling saying that the Clear Air Act is ill-suited for the task - instead he has opted to open a public comment period. Under the Bush administration it has become routine to downplay and even outright censor any scientific findings that imply that the planet is heating up as a result of human activity and that it may destroy the earth.
GUEST: Rick Piltz, Director of Climate Science Watch a watchdog project of the Government Accountability Project, and former senior associate in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, who resigned in protest in 2005. For more information, visit www.climatesciencewatch.org.
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