E2 Round-up: Graham explains, again, why Congress should act on climate, meteorological skeptics, and where Sierra Club will draw line in the sand

Back home in South Carolina, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is doing what he often does in Washington, defend his effort to fashion a compromise climate change bill.

Graham told a home state audience that it would be much worse if EPA acted on its own because its greenhouse gas regulations could apply to small businesses, apartment complexes, small farms and even churches. EPA officials deny they have any intention of regulating small businesses and the like for greenhouse gas emissions, and are writing a “tailoring” rule to limit compliance to large emitters.

Graham has come under fire back home for his work on climate change and was stressing during his speech why it is better for the economy if Congress acts instead of EPA.

“Anybody that produces carbon, from a small farmer to a church, is potentially affected,” Graham said of the EPA rules. “And I believe the way to regulate carbon -- and it should be regulated, by the way -- is through Congress, not through the EPA.”

From the State newspaper: “State air pollution regulator Myra Reece said a person who plans to build a 20-unit apartment complex or someone trying to open a 200-seat restaurant would have to comply with the EPA greenhouse gas rules.”

The New York Times finds an unusual divide in the climate debate: climate scientists vs. meteorologists.

From the Times: “A study released on Monday by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin found that only about half of the 571 television weathercasters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring and fewer than a third believed that climate change was ‘caused mostly by human activities.’”

The American Meteorology Society affirmed a United Nations panel that global warming is happening and the humans are the likely cause. But among scientists, meteorologists as a group are among the most skeptical about the link between human activity and climate change.

In the Los Angeles Times, the new chief of the Sierra Club explains his group’s strategy on climate change to Jim Tankersley.

Michael Brune, the former director of the Rainforest Action Network, is willing to compromise, but not on some things.

“We will go to the mat and we will fight for the retention of EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases. . . . Our job is to make sure that's not included in the bill,” Brune told the LA Times.

The EPA on Monday said it would consider adding a chemical used to make plastic containers on its list of substances that may harm the environment.

“Recent studies have found “subtle” effects on laboratory animals from exposure to BPA at low levels, the EPA said,” in Bloomberg.