CCA Opposes EPA's Proposed Step Back on Climate Change

A public comment submitted Sept. 15 on the federal rulemaking website expresses CCA's strong opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to repeal its own the 2009 "Endangerment Finding," which underlies the agency's efforts until now to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The comment was signed by CCA Chair David (Cotton) Cottingham on behalf of the club.

The EPA position that it proposes to abandon had found that climate change impacts of GHG pollutants threaten public health and welfare. EPA also would abandon its GHG restrictions to date.

The agency proposal "launches an assault on a climate science consensus that in the last two decades has driven public policy around the globe, including until now in the United States," the CCA comment says, taking exception to both the scientific and legal grounds proffered by EPA.

The comment challenges, in particular, EPA's heavy reliance "on a draft report published Aug. 1 by the Department of Energy (DOE) Climate Working Group (CWG), which consists of five members known for their climate change skepticism who met in private, did not even share meeting notes or draft reports with the public, and now have been disbanded." More convincing, the comment says, is the detailed critique of the CWG report that 85 climate change experts quickly submitted to DOE. These experts charged that the report "exhibits pervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics."

Reliance on the CWG report, the CCA comment says, "is a classic case of someone who, as Paul Simon put it, 'hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.' "

The comment period closed Sept. 22. Full text of the comment is on the CCA website.