FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 28, 2008
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Washington, DC. - In an effort to enhance and ensure prompt governmental analysis and planning on climate change, on February 28, 2008, the International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Sierra Club filed a formal legal petition with the White House's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) seeking to clarify that climate change analyses is to be included in all federal environmental review documents. The groups' petition seeks the agency's adoption of regulatory amendments directing federal agency's to plan for and oversee reductions in greenhouse gas emissions associated with new federal projects. The effort also seeks to ensure that long-term federal projects are planned and completed within the By law, CEQ is charged with overseeing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the nation's basic charter and mechanism for incorporating environmental considerations into major federal decision-making. The agency is directed to fulfill NEPA's purpose by promoting efforts that prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere. CEQ meets this charge by issuing umbrella regulations and guidance to federal agencies detailing how environmental review of each federal action is to be undertaken. Today's legal petition seeks amendments to CEQ's regulations that clarify that all NEPA analysis should include climate change components.
"To date the White House has all but ignored the impending global warming crisis during governmental planning," stated ICTA Legal Director Joseph Mendelson. "The goal of the legal petition is to compel CEQ to take steps that ensure government actions and projects mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and proactively plan for the realities of future climate change," Mendelson continued.
To date several federal courts have found with varying degrees that climate change issues need to be considered during environmental impact review, however, CEQ has failed to clarify how and when such climate change analysis should be completed.
"Global warming is the biggest environmental threat we have ever faced. Yet every year, federal agencies make decisions to permit and pay for construction of big new sources of global warming pollution. The National Environmental Policy Act requires agencies to look before they leap into more global warming. What we are asking for today is clear rules to make sure this gets done," added David Doniger, Policy Director of NRDC's Climate Center.
Specifically, the legal petition requests that CEQ:
"As a matter of common sense, climate change is obviously among the 'significant' environmental impacts that NEPA requires federal agencies to consider in their decision-making. Unfortunately, as apart of their unwillingness to acknowledge global warming, the Bush Administration has refused to do so. These regulatory changes should make it perfectly clear even to them that the law requires the federal government to consider these climate impacts," stated David Bookbinder, Chief Climate Counsel for the Sierra Club.
The legal effort comes three months after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that "continued GHG emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century." Last year, the petitioners were parties and legal counsel in the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA in which the highest U.S. court recognized the scientific findings of the IPCC and held that "the harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized."
The full legal petition is available at: www.icta.org/doc/ceq