Republican-Controlled House Assails EPA Head on Effort to Regulate CO2

At a congressional hearing, the new Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions, questioning the legal, scientific, and economic basis of such regulation. Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sharply questioned EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson, saying an effort by the agency to limit CO2 emissions would cost the U.S. millions of jobs and billions of dollars a year. Rep. Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, said that following the failure of climate legislation in the Senate, the Obama administration was attempting to regulate greenhouse gas emissions administratively. But Jackson said the agency’s authority to limit CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007, and warned against Congress overturning the EPA’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health because they warm the planet. “Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question — that would become part of the committee’s legacy,” Jackson said.