All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

The Environmental Protection Agency said today that greenhouse gasses put the environment and the health of the public at risk, moving the agency toward regulating those gasses as part of an effort to battle climate change.

Some Republicans immediately responded to the news with statements opposing the decision.

"It’s unsurprising and disappointing that the EPA has decided to push though the Endangerment finding based purely on political calculations and not based on science," said House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA). "Earlier this year, EPA set up internal barriers to stifle dissent and is now ignoring serious accusations to the science upon which the endangerment finding is based."

Indiana's Mike Pence, Chairman of the House Republican Conference, suggested the EPA was going to "kill jobs."

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An international conference in a European country involving complicated science and nearly 200 oft-competing agendas doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would generate a ton of eyeballs on U.S. news sites. But the two week U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen kicking off today seems to be garnering serious attention, at least for a story that doesn't involve a certain allegedly adulterous golfer: The words "Copenhagen" and "Climategate" both appeared in Google's "hot topics" this morning, right alongside Tiger, bowl games, Saturday Night Live and Facebook.

The interest is coming, it's fair to assume, primarily from two groups: Those who believe climate change is man-made and real – and are interested in whether international leaders make progress on addressing the issue – and those who believe that, in the words of Homer Simpson, "it’s all a load of crap."

The former camp includes the vast majority of climate scientists as well as the residents of low-lying nations like the Maldives, where government ministers recently held a cabinet meeting underwater to stress the possibility that, due to rising water levels brought on by global warming, their country could soon disappear into the sea.

The latter, meanwhile, includes skeptics, most of them conservative, who have seized on the recent so-called "Climategate" story to defend their position that global warming is a myth grounded in a conspiracy being perpetrated by scientists and activists around the world.

Former vice president and climate activist Al Gore – a charter member of the first camp – is meeting today with President Obama to discuss climate change at the White House. In an example of just how polarized the issue has become, two conservative members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are reportedly calling for the Oscar Gore won for the environmental documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" to be rescinded in the wake of the Climategate e-mails.

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Officials say President Obama will put forward a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 during the Copenhagen Climate Talks in December.

They say this reflects Mr. Obama's broader commitment to reduce emissions by 83 percent by 2050 in interim steps as follows:

• 30 percent below 2005 levels in 2025
• 42 percent below 2005 levels in 2030

These numbers are similar to the bills pending in both House and Senate.

White House climate change adviser Carol Browner says the Congressional Budget Office has scored the economic impact of these reductions at $173 a year per family of four in 2020.

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Mark Knoller is a CBS News White House correspondent. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here. You can also follow him on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/markknoller.

Religious groups are stepping up their lobbying efforts in support of climate change legislation, focusing on a goal all of their flock can agree on: helping the poor and vulnerable impacted by global warming.

A number of Jewish and Christian groups are choosing to bypass climate issues that are contentious within the faith community, such as whether global warming is man-made, and are instead zeroing in on proposals in Congress to provide international aid for people impacted by the negative effects of climate change.

The push for "international adaptation aid" is also part of a broader awareness effort launching today called "Day Six," which aims to make the public and members of Congress more conscious of the moral imperative to pass legislation regulating carbon emissions.

"On the sixth day God created us, and he made us stewards of his creation," Katie Paris, the communications director for the group Faith in Public Life, said Thursday on a conference call with reporters. She also explained why religious groups are focused on international adaptation aid: "Those who are hurt most and worst should not be helped the least and last," she said.

Groups involved in the "Day Six" campaign are directly reaching out to hundreds of thousands of people in the faith community today with tools to build grassroots support for climate change legislation.

The campaign features a Web site with a 60-second video pressing the issue, social networking tools and an online petition to Senators, urging support for climate legislation with adequate funding for international adaptation programs.

The House of Representatives in June passed a climate change bill that allocates 1 percent of its funding for international adaptation funding, which amounts to approximately $500 to $700 million, said Reverend Jim Ball, senior director of the climate campaign for the Evangelical Environmental Network.

Ball called that "woefully inadequate," citing reports from the World Bank that the annual cost of adapting to climate change in developing economies could reach between $75 billion and $100 billion over the next 40 years.

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The Environmental Protection Agency is moving closer toward regulating greenhouse gas emissions, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is questioning the science behind its decisions.

The business group wants the EPA to hold a public hearing -- with witnesses, cross-examinations and a judge -- to decide whether the agency is using sound science to declare that humans are primarily causing global warming, the Los Angeles Times reports.

In April, the EPA proposed a ruling to declare greenhouse gases a cause of global warming and a threat to public welfare. After opening up the ruling to public comment for 60 days, the agency is now set to formally declare its ruling, which was based on peer-reviewed scientific analysis.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson proposed the ruling after completing the scientific review ordered by the Supreme Court in 2007, when it ruled that the agency has the authority to regulate emissions from vehicles.

The EPA's ruling said "elevated greenhouse gas concentrations are the primary result of human activities," and it called the U.S. transportation sector is a "significant contributor" to U.S. and global carbon emissions.

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While Democrats have complained in recent days about supposedly "manufactured outrage" over health care reform proposals, evidence has emerged of blatantly inauthentic outrage over climate change legislation being discussed on Capitol Hill.

A lobbying firm indirectly hired by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy (ACCCE) has admitted sending fake letters, allegedly from real nonprofit organizations, to congressmen to protest climate change legislation, the New York Times reports.

ACCCE said in a statement that it is considering legal action against the responsible lobbying firm, Bonner & Associates.

"ACCCE has always maintained high ethical and professional standards," the statement said. "In this case, the standards and practices that we require for grassroots advocacy outreach were not adhered to by Bonner and Associates."

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President Obama and other world leaders at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate today announced international commitments to reducing polluting emissions worldwide -- but also acknowledged there is a long way to go in addressing the problem of global warming.

"We've made a good start, but I'm the first one to acknowledge progress on this issue will not be easy," Mr. Obama said from L’Aquila, Italy. "It is no small task for 17 leaders to bridge thier differences on climate change."

The countries represented at the forum agreed to recognize the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels should not to exceed two degrees Celsius. With that objective in mind, the nations agreed to what President Obama called a "historic consensus on concrete goals for reducing carbon emissions," with developed nations agreeing to reduce them by 80 percent by 2050 -- a goal the climate change bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives aims for. Developing nations agreed between now and the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen to negotaitie concrete goals to reduce their own emissions by 2050.

"As I wrestle with these issues politically in my own country, I have come to see it is absolutely critical all of us go beyond what is expected of us if we are to achieve our goals," Mr. Obama said.

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The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward... and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be a independent review process inside a federal agency -- and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.

Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, told CBSNews.com in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels."

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If environmentalists get their way, Ken Salazar may one day join the ranks of endangered species.

In a move that has infuriated environmental groups, the interior secretary announced today that he will uphold the Bush administration's decision to limit restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions that imperil Artic polar bears.

Environmental groups said that they had hoped that the Obama administration would overturn the rule, which currently only restricts the burning of fossil fuels within the bears' natural habitat. These groups point out that failure to more broadly regulate carbon dioxide, even those emissions released thousands of miles from the Arctic, cripples larger efforts to address the effects of global warming. Studies show that the melting of Arctic sea ice threatens the polar bears. A spokesperson for Greenpeace said that the bears will be extinct by 2050 if stricter rules are not embraced.

"Today's announcement shows a clear willingness to compromise when it comes to global warming science and policy." said Melanie Duchin, a global warming campaigner for Greenpeace based in Anchorage, Alaska. "I expected more from the Obama administration."

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In an Earth Day speech in Newton, Iowa today, President Obama detailed plans to generate 20 percent of the country's electricity from wind and create 250,000 jobs in the alternative energy sector by 2030.

In his address to the employees of the Trinity Structural Towers Manufacturing Plant, Mr. Obama called for Americans to recognize the dangers of global climate change and the urgent need to do something about it. To this end, he pointed out that his budget will annually invest $15 billion in "clean energy," including wind, solar, geothermal and clean coal, for 10 years.

"It's a win-win: It's good for the environment; it's great for the economy," said Mr. Obama.

He also said that he would create a carbon cap for the country, turning the ability to produce carbon emissions into a scarce commodity. This, the president argued, will lead to companies making wiser decisions on how to allocate money between productivity and pollution.

"Everybody has known that we had to do something but nobody wanted to actually go ahead and do it because it's hard," said Mr. Obama. "I reject that argument."

President Obama’s speech, as provided by the White House, is below.

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