EPA Pick Is ‘Open’ to Carbon Tax

By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Jan. 19 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator-designate Lisa Jackson said she was “open to discussion” of a carbon tax to limit greenhouse gas emissions and would immediately begin a review of the Bush administration’s denial of California’s request to regulate those emissions from automobiles.

However, Jackson said, “a carbon tax alone in isolation does not set an eventual goal for actual reduction of global warming,” and she told a Senate panel that President-elect Barack Obama favored a cap-and-trade system.

Steven Chu, Obama’s energy secretary-designate, also said he supported Obama’s preference for a cap-and-trade program over a carbon tax.

Clayton Boyce, spokesman for American Trucking Associations, said the federation was opposed to cap-and-trade for mobile sources such as heavy trucks and cars.

The Bush administration’s EPA head, Stephen Johnson, in 2007 denied California a waiver that would have allowed the state to implement its stringent greenhouse-gas emissions standard.

“If I am confirmed, I will immediately revisit the waiver, looking at the science and the rule of law, and relying on the expert advice of EPA’s employees in making a determination,” Jackson said at a Jan. 14 confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Several other states are prepared to follow California’s lead, but Johnson said granting the waiver would lead to a “patchwork” of state global-warming laws rather than a uniform federal standard.

Johnson’s decision was heavily criticized by congressional Democrats, who said the EPA administrator went against the advice of the agency’s professional staff.

Jackson, a career employee at EPA for 15 years who recently was head of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, pledged that her administration would be founded on two core values: scientific integrity and the rule of law.

“If I am confirmed, I will administer with science as my guide,” Jackson said. “I understand that the laws leave room for policy-makers to make policy judgments. But if I am confirmed, political appointees will not compromise the integrity of EPA’s technical experts to advance particular regulatory outcomes.”

Jackson pledged to work on Oba-ma’s key environmental priorities, which include reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and other air pollutants, addressing toxic chemicals, cleaning up hazardous waste and protecting water.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), committee chairwoman, said the EPA has “gone astray” during the past eight years.

The agency “needs to be awakened from a deep and nightmarish sleep,” Boxer said.

“The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is very clear: to protect human health and the environment,” she said.

“Unfortunately, we have seen the agency move in a direction diametrically opposed to the mission it was established to achieve.”

Republicans on the committee praised outgoing administrator Johnson as one of the best-ever agency heads, but spoke highly of Jackson’s qualifications and experience.

Her confirmation was expected to gain approval of the committee and the full Senate as early as this week.

Likewise, Nancy Sutley, currently deputy mayor for energy and environment for the city of Los Angeles, was expected to  gain approval easily as Obama’s choice to chair the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. During a brief confirmation hearing Jan. 14, Sutley characterized her job as being “adviser to the president on the important environmental issues of the day.”

At a Jan. 13 hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Energy Secretary-designate Chu said he preferred a cap-and-trade system to a carbon tax.

A broad-based group of large U.S. corporations and environmental organizations on Jan. 15 released a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions by proposing a cap-and-trade system aimed at cutting emissions 42 percent by 2030.

The U.S. Climate Action Partnership said it hoped this year to push forward climate change legislation that would not only cut emissions, but also offer incentives for coal plants to capture and sequester carbon dioxide emissions, and create a carbon market board to examine offsets and contain costs.

Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a Nobel Prize winner, also said he supported stepping up the construction of domestic nuclear power plants, but wanted to do further research to find ways to mitigate the dangers of nuclear waste storage.

He also said he wants to employ efficiency measures and renewable energy research to combat the effects of global warming.

Committee members praised Chu’s qualifications and predicted he would be confirmed easily.