This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It's been official for more than three years: Greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are a threat to public health and our environment. That's what the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April 2007, and it directed the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate these substances, which are the biggest cause of global warming.
Under the ruling, an interpretation of the 40-year-old Clean Air Act, the Utah Division of Air Quality must rewrite rules governing the state's most egregious polluters. These companies, about a dozen, will have to meet new permitting standards for emissions of CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride, and the state will adopt new monitoring systems.
Because Utah has rightly adopted an EPA "tailoring rule," only the worst emitters will be monitored for greenhouse gases. The rule changes the permitting trigger from 100 tons of emissions annually to a whopping 100,000 tons each year.
That means only 15,550 permits will be required nationwide, instead of 6 million.
We believe more polluting businesses should come under the new rule. The United States produces far more pollution per capita than most of the rest of the world, potentially leading the way to environmental catastrophe.
Already the polar and Greenland ice caps are shrinking at an incredibly rapid rate, sea temperatures and sea levels are rising, ecosystems are being altered and species disappearing.
Nevertheless, some states and business organizations unreasonably refuse to follow the new rule and say they won't try to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Failing to adopt the tailoring rule would put many more businesses in violation of the federal law. Fortunately, Utah is not one of those digging in their heels to protest the new permitting requirements.
And it's interesting to note that no Utah business has complained. About half of those affected already are required to have permits under the Clean Air Act for other types of pollutants and now will have to add greenhouse gases. Obviously, they can see that pollution reductions are inevitable, one way or another. If Congress were to pass legislation limiting carbon emissions nationwide, as it should, such limits would become part of the cost of doing business in this country.
The EPA is trying to give states time to clean up their business communities through the tailoring rule. But the planet is running out of time. Stricter enforcement of the court ruling should not be delayed too long.