The Environmental Protection Agency's Quest for Ascendancy

(MoneyWatch)  Neglected and often actively hampered for eight years under President Bush, the United States Environmental Protection Agency is on a warpath that could make it one of the most powerful government bodies in the country.

The latest big news from the agency is its endangerment finding against carbon dioxide. In essence, the agency says CO2 is dangerous and must be regulated alongside far less ubiquitous gases and particulates like sulfur dioxide and mercury.

That seems like an eminently reasonable finding, if climate change is real. But putting the EPA in control would require its internal bureaucracy to tackle a far larger issue than any it has ever faced. As a Commerce employee points out in Reuters, the EPA would have to go from regulation 15,000 to 1.5 million entities.

It would also open the way for lawsuits against emitters by every rights group with an axe to grind, leaving the agency to figure out a way to define its rules without causing more political and economic harm than it intended.

Aside from the endangerment finding, though, it seems like the EPA is popping up in the news nearly every day now:

• Temporarily blocking mountaintop removal in coal mining pending a review
• Effectively blocking coal plants
• Reinstating rules dropped during Bush's presidency
• Considering taxing cows (they've since decided against it -- for now)
• Handling the delicate issue of whether to raise ethanol blend rates

Of course, all of these issues, and many other the agency has under consideration, hinge on the question of how harmful greenhouse gases are.

If they're found extremely harmful, the EPA's power and authority must increase dramatically. What remains to be seen is whether the house and senate will seek to block that in the act of passing their own laws, including a carbon tax or cap.

But I'm curious what readers think: Should the EPA be trusted with control over segments of the economy? Or, assuming the power to oversee climate change issues goes to someone else, who should be in control -- another agency? Congress? Feel free to chime in below.