Obama administration battles Republicans over climate powers

Feb 10, 2011, 1:21 GMT

Washington - President Barack Obama's top environmental regulator on Wednesday warned that a Republican-led effort to remove its powers to curb climate change would set a dangerous precedent of putting politics above science.

But conservative lawmakers slammed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson for taking steps that will harm the US economy and for going over Congress' head to regulate greenhouse- gas emissions that scientists believe cause global warming.

Jackson faced tough questions from Republicans before an energy panel of the US House of Representatives. Her testimony comes as the EPA under Obama has this year begun to regulate pollution from coal and oil power plants and refineries.

Republicans, backed by some Democrats from rural coal-producing states, have introduced legislation in the House that would remove the EPA's authority to curb climate-damaging pollution. The EPA in 2009 ruled it has that right under a 1990 clean air law, because climate change endangers public health.

Jackson insisted that decision had been a 'scientific finding,' and warned that repealing the EPA's authority would be a case of 'politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question - that would become part of this committee's legacy.'

Legislation that would reform US climate policies stalled in Congress last year and has become even less likely since conservatives who are skeptical of climate change retook control of the House in January. Republicans argued that Congress never gave the Obama administration the authority to curb climate change.

'Although Congress has made its position abundantly clear not to regulate (greenhouse gases), we now have unelected staff at EPA and the courts pushing the United States down a path that in my opinion will cost jobs and make us less competitive in the global market place,' said Republican Ed Whitfield, who headed the panel grilling Jackson.