Protecting the EPA's Authority to Help Overcome Global Warming | Sojourners

Protecting the EPA's Authority to Help Overcome Global Warming

As I discuss more fully in my book, Global Warming and the Risen LORD, in the United States we are behind in our efforts as a society to reduce global warming pollution. If we don't begin to significantly reduce emissions soon, we could face the prospect of dangerous tipping points being reached that would greatly magnify the consequences of climate change beyond what we already face.

There has been a bipartisan failure over the last two decades to pass comprehensive climate change legislation. Given this, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recently issued regulations limiting greenhouse gases (GHGs). They have done so as required by the Clean Air Act, after finding that climate change poses a threat to human health.

Thus, the EPA has fulfilled its responsibility to seriously address climate change, compelled by: (1) the failure of Congress and the current and previous Administrations to pass comprehensive legislation; (2) the law as found in the Clean Air Act; (3) the overwhelming science that climate change poses a serious threat to human health, especially to the most vulnerable.

Unfortunately, certain members of Congress are attempting to pass legislation to either strip the EPA's authority to regulate GHGs or delay its ability to do so. The House of Representatives has already passed the Upton bill striping the EPA's authority. (Sadly, that was a foregone conclusion.) The same bill is being offered in the Senate by Sen. Inhofe (R-OK). In addition, Sen. Rockefeller (D-WV) and possibly Sen. Baucus (D-MT) have bills to delay and/or weaken the EPA's authority to protect human health by addressing climate change. All such efforts to prevent the EPA from reducing global warming pollution must be opposed. We must put a stop to this in the Senate.

People of faith should contact their Senators and respectfully urge them to support the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs), and oppose legislation to either strip EPA's authority or delay implementation of regulations to reduce GHGs.

Click here to find out who your Senators are and how to contact them.

The Rev. Jim Ball, Ph.D., is Executive Vice President for Policy and Climate Change at the Evangelical Environmental Network and author of Global Warming and the Risen LORD. To learn more about protecting the EPA's authority to overcome global warming, visit creationcare.org.