Anniversary Gift: Markey, Select Committee to Issue Subpoena to EPA for Global Warming Docs Today

Press Release

One year ago today, the Supreme Court handed down its decision on the landmark global warming case Massachusetts v. EPA, saying the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency must address whether heat-trapping emissions from motor vehicles endanger public health or welfare. After a year of stalling and avoidance by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will vote to issue a subpoena for EPA documents showing the Agency's progress in making the "endangerment" finding and proposing national emissions standards.

"Paper is the traditional one year anniversary gift. On this anniversary of Massachusetts v. EPA, we're sending a piece of paper—a subpoena—to Stephen Johnson and the EPA," said Markey. "The modern one year anniversary gift is a clock, and we're trying to make sure this administration doesn't run out the clock on their term without taking action to protect the climate."

The vote, which is expected to succeed on a bipartisan basis, will precede a Select Committee hearing on aviation's role in the causes and solutions to global warming. A simple majority of the committee's 15 members is required to approve the subpoena, and the committee expects to serve the subpoena on the EPA shortly.

If the EPA does not turn over the requested documents following the subpoena within 10 days, the committee will then work with the House leadership to enforce the subpoena.

In conversations and in letters dating back to January, Chairman Markey and Johnson have discussed his agency turning over documents pertaining to EPA's required ruling on whether or not heat-trapping carbon dioxide pollution is a danger to human health or welfare; and draft regulations for controlling global warming emissions from vehicles. Johnson had personally committed to turning over the documents, but has since refused to do so, most recently when he testified before the Select Committee in a March 13, 2008 hearing. More information on the exchanges between Markey and Johnson is available on the Select Committee website HERE.

Johnson will not be in Washington, DC today to witness the committee vote, as he is currently traveling in Australia.

"Stephen Johnson is going to the other side of the Earth to avoid giving the American people any information on his agency's global warming work," said Markey. "But he can't avoid the people's right to know, he can't avoid the courts, and he can't avoid the fact that our planet is endangered by global warming."

In April of 2007, the Supreme Court directed EPA to determine whether greenhouse gas emissions cause or contribute to air pollution that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. If EPA makes this so-called "endangerment finding," the Supreme Court said, then it must regulate these emissions from motor vehicles. In its response to the Supreme Court decision, EPA spent about six months conducting intensive analysis and, according to EPA staff disclosures to Congress, Johnson signed off on his agency's positive endangerment finding as well as on a regulatory proposal to reduce these emissions from motor vehicles (to levels that correspond to a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon by 2018). These documents were forwarded to other White House and federal agencies for review in December.

Source