Subject: ＥＥＥ会議（米国の温暖化防止政策：連邦政府vs州政府）
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 02:09:19 +0900
From: "kkaneko" <kkaneko@eagle.ocn.ne.jp>

各位
米国では、ブッシュ政権が地球温暖化防止に消極的な反面、東北部の７
州では独自にかなり積極的な対応を示しております。　本日（２月２２日）付けＮｅ
ｗ York Times社説によれば、これら７州の司法長官は近く、連邦政府の環境保護庁
（ＥＰＡ）長官を相手取って、温暖化の最大の元凶である２酸化炭素の排出規制をこ
れまで全く行ってこなかったのは、２酸化炭素を規制対象としているクリーン大気法
(Clean Air Act)の違反であるという訴えを裁判所に提起する意向を明らかにした
由。この訴訟によりブッシュ政権は今後、火力発電所による２酸化炭素排出制限強化
を迫られることになりそうです。　詳細は次のとおり。　ご参考まで。
金子熊夫
********************************
A Pollutant by Any Other Name
The pressure on President Bush to abandon his irresponsibly
passive approach to global warming was ratcheted up this week. On Thursday
the attorneys general of seven Northeastern states announced their intention
to sue the administration ・in the person of Christie Whitman, administrator
of the Environmental Protection Agency ・for its failure to regulate power
plant emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas, as required
by the Clean Air Act.

These same states frequently pressured Mrs. Whitman's Democratic
predecessor, Carol Browner, to invoke various provisions of the act to
reduce long-regulated pollutants like sulfur dioxide, which causes acid
rain. The difference this time is that they are trying to get the federal
government to pay attention to carbon dioxide, the one compound that remains
completely unregulated despite mounting scientific evidence that it is
likely to be the most dangerous pollutant of all.

The Clean Air Act requires the E.P.A. to review and update
standards governing power plant emissions every eight years. The lawsuit
says that for 20 years the agency has failed to do these reviews. Had it
done so, the suit contends, the agency would long ago have added carbon
dioxide to the list of power plant emissions deserving of regulation ・
especially since power plants account for nearly 40 percent of all the
carbon dioxide emitted in America today.

The suit is thus a direct challenge to one of several reasons
President Bush had advanced for not moving more forcefully to control carbon
dioxide. The reason he gave for renouncing the Kyoto Protocol, the agreement
on climate change signed by the Clinton administration in 1997 and since
ratified by about 100 countries, is that aggressively reducing emissions
would be too expensive. He also insists that carbon dioxide is not a
pollutant as defined by the Clean Air Act. That's the reason he gives for
not including carbon dioxide in the clean air legislation he has sent to
Congress.

The lawsuit says this is poppycock. One section of the act
explicitly recognizes carbon dioxide as a pollutant, alongside more familiar
culprits like sulfur dioxide. In addition, carbon dioxide plainly falls
within the act's definition of what a pollutant is and, no less clearly, it
meets criteria necessary for the E.P.A. administrator, in this case Mrs.
Whitman, to regulate it.

The suit could fail. State challenges to federal policy are
always iffy. But it may at least inspire honest discussion about how to
control the largest single source of carbon dioxide in the world. And it may
force the administration to explain a global warming strategy that is
becoming increasingly indefensible.