For Immediate Release: March 13, 2008
Contact: Josh Dorner, 202-675-2384
Congressional Panel Investigates Do-Nothing EPA
Top Sierra Club Attorney Addresses Agency's Refusal to Act on Global Warming
Washington, D.C.-- Sierra Club Chief Climate Counsel David Bookbinder-one of the lead attorneys in Massachusetts v. EPA, the landmark global warming case-today testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. He described the numerous examples of the Environmental Protection Agency's record of intransigence, dishonesty, unlawful acts, and outright refusal to follow both the law and the directives of courts all the way up the U.S. Supreme Court.
David Bookbinder's full testimony can be found here (pdf):
Excepts from the testimony of David Bookbinder, Sierra Club Chief Climate Counsel
On EPA's Refusal to Make the So-called "Endangerment Finding":
"Despite these findings, for some reason EPA still cannot decide whether greenhouse gases are 'reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.' I caution this Committee, the Congress, the people of the United States, and indeed the whole world, not to hold their breath waiting for EPA to formally acknowledge the obvious."
Conclusion:
"EPA's consistent response to the terrible threat of climate change has been to twist the words of the Clean Air Act so as to justify the agency in both its own refusal to act and in preventing anyone else from doing so. In the end, the only reason that I can see for EPA's delay in answering the endangerment question is that it cannot figure out how to torture the statutory language into supporting a finding that greenhouse gases are not "reasonably anticipated to endanger public health or welfare."
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