The danger of the process
Issue: “The EPA, together with the ‘Climate Working Group’ (CWG) of regular suspects (more Judith Curry and Ross McKitrick) in Doe, has just presented a document for public comments, its attempt to rescind the 2009 hardening danger finding for greenhouse gas emissions.”
Once again, the United States is in its own drama: a political and legal theater that no other western nation has chosen to organize. Donald Trump is a part of that problem. The EPA danger finding is another. Both are unique American creations.
Unlike other Western democracies, the United States requires a formal “dangerous finding” before its environmental agency can regulate greenhouse gas emissions. This is not the norm elsewhere. Most democratic nations simply legislate emission objectives or train their regulatory bodies directly through environmental or climatic laws.
This is not a scientific dilemma. It is, as usual, a policy, constitutional and cultural, embedded in the American system and not resolved long before the revolution.
Why the United States is different and dysfunctional
The danger of EPA 2009 was not the product of the legislation, but of a ruling of the Supreme Court. In Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), the Court interpreted the Clean Air Law of 1970, designed for a very different world, as a greenhouse gas cover. That decision placed the burden of climate regulation in the EPA, conditioned to its own scientific judgment.
This was an error of judgment by the court. Recruited an aging law to administer a modern planetary crisis, a legally creative, but politically little solid decision. Congress, not EPA, should have assumed responsibility. But he didn’t. And so, the load was delegated down, without a new law to support it. The result: an inherently unstable regulatory base, vulnerable to reinterpretation or reversion, which is exactly what we are seeing now.
What other nations do
United Kingdom: The Climate Change Law (2008) demands union emissions and carbon budgets. An independent body (the CCC) advises and monitors progress. No danger finding is required.
European Union: GHG reduction is governed by direct legislation such as the Commerce System of Climate Law and EU emissions. The European Environment Agency traces politics, not through judicial triggers, but a legislative mandate.
Canada: Use federal laws (for example, strain) and carbon prices legislation. The regulation of CO₂ does not depend on a scientific “finding”.
Australia: Emissions are managed through parliamentary legislation and report schemes. There is no EPA style system. Political rotation affects the direction, as it should in a democracy in operation.
In all these systems, governments legislate first, and regulators implement what people, democratically through Parliament or Congress, have decided. Scientists advise. They do not make law through the back door.
The American exception
The American system is entangled in the judicial precedent, the reinterpretations of the agency of the ancient statutes and the administrative processes that blur the line between science and the formulation of policies. The clean air act was never designed to handle climate change. Made! And the EPA never intended to bring the legal and moral weight to decide whether the entire atmosphere constitutes a threat to public health. Made!
No other western nation operates in this way, because it is constitutionally confused and procedurally not solid. It is not democratic. And puts scientists in a position in which they should never be: decide the regulatory law without an electoral mandate.
So yes, the United States is the exception. And that exception is precisely what makes this current review of the danger discovery so politically.
But let’s be clear: This is not a scientific problem. This is structural, legal and cultural. It does not depend on scientists to fight for him, unless the government of the time directs him directly. Otherwise, it belongs to Congress, the people and the democratic process.
Scientists would do well to set aside. This is not his war. So, unless they are invited, everyone should be expelled.
And the United States as a nation should finally grow and act responsible and rational.
#danger #danger #finding
