EPA chief: Climate change study backs up agency’s carbon regulations

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that a new study on the effects of climate change on public health reinforces the need for the Obama administration’s work on greenhouse gas emissions. 

At a White House event on Monday, Gina McCarthy said the public health study validates the EPA’s “endangerment finding,” a 2009 decision that says greenhouse gases are a threat to the public so severe that the agency has a responsibility to regulate climate change-causing emissions. 

{mosads}“It does, actually, underscore it. It’s just building on the wealth of evidence we have here,” McCarthy said. “This gives people a really good sense of what the consensus is of all of the top science on this, and the scientists.”

The EPA, under President Obama, has issued a host of rules designed to combat climate change, including those aimed at carbon emissions from power plants, and methane leaks at oil and natural gas drilling sites. The agency is currently putting the finishing touches on the latter, while the former is on hold pending legal challenges.

The endangerment finding is central to those rules. Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have been hostile to the finding, saying last week that they would reassess it if elected in November.

The White House issued a report Monday highlighting climate change’s effects on public health, warning that as the Earth warms, it will exacerbate health issues including heat-related deaths and food safety..

McCarthy said she hopes the study “provides the support we need, as policymakers and as leaders in government, to actually take the action we need that’s commensurate with the core values we all hold dear, and the challenge to those core values that climate change poses.”