Jackson: Effort to stop EPA 'step backward' for science if successful

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson blasted an effort in Congress to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.

She said the effort would be an “enormous step backward for science” if successful.

Jackson defended EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare. That "endangerment" finding requires EPA to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, according to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and others in the Senate and House are seeking to stop EPA through the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to prevent federal rules from being implemented. The act has only been used once, when in the 1990s Congress blocked an ergonomics standard proposed by the Occupational Health & Safety Administration.

The resolution on EPA runs counter to “multiple lines of scientific inquiry” and the consensus of climate scientists that humans are a leading cause of climate change, Jackson said.

“The science behind climate change is settled,” Jackson said during testimony before the Senate Appropriations Interior, Environment, and Related Subcommittee hearing on EPA’s 2011 budget request on Wednesday morning.