Establishing a national ambient air quality standard, Spreading EPA's regulatory tentacles into every corner of the economy

Ambient error

By EPW Blog
Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Link to Inhofe EPW Press Blog http://preview.tinyurl.com/y7spy2f

Establishing a national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for CO2 is feared possibly more than any other potential greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act (CAA). A CO2 NAAQS would twist the CAA into knots and spread EPA’s regulatory tentacles into every corner of the economy. And according to a recent report, there’s no avoiding it. http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-09-50.pdf

EPA and some environmental activists say a GHG NAAQS won’t happen, because EPA possesses the legal flexibility to avoid it. EPA has discretion, they believe, to craft greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations in the most cost-effective and rational manner. But as Nathan Richardson of Resources for the Future argues in a December 2009 study, EPA “likely lacks much of this claimed flexibility, and will probably be forced by interconnections and statutory triggers built into the CAA to set national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS)â€