The Environmental Protection Agency took its first steps toward regulating the greenhouse gas emissions that escape airplane engines and pollute the atmosphere. The EPA intends to update the Clean Air Act, which was first introduced in 1963, to include jurisdiction limiting the emissions from these plane engines.
The Environmental Protection Agency took its first steps toward regulating the greenhouse gas emissions that escape airplane engines and pollute the atmosphere. The EPA intends to update the Clean Air Act, which was first introduced in 1963, to include jurisdiction limiting the emissions from these plane engines.
This “endangerment finding” as the report puts it, proves that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are exiting the airplane’s engines and entering the earth’s atmosphere. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, gas emissions from aircrafts account for 11 percent of carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. transportation sources and 3 percent of the country’s total CO2 emissions. Airplanes also emit water vapor at high altitudes, birthing clouds that produce heat and further global warming. With aircraft emissions expected to triple by 2050 if there’s no legislation to curb the vertically-growing industry, airplanes could conceivably ruin lives and dramatically speed up global warming.
Regulating emissions from airplanes is no new topic for environmental activists. Seven years ago, the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth issued a petition against the EPA, calling for the country’s biggest protection agency to revise the Clean Air Act to include airplane emissions. The complaint went unanswered, but Earthjustice, an environmental law agency, pushed the absence of legislation and filed a lawsuit on the EPA. In 2011, a judge ruled that the EPA was legally permitted to start the process for crafting the regulations. Yet, three years after the judge’s ruling the EPA were still silent on the issue: until now.
Even with the opportunity to right its wrong from ignoring environmental activism calling for airplane emission regulation for years, the EPA failed to woo any organizations with its announcement that airplanes’ gas emission is, indeed, dangerous to human life. Instead of announcing its intent to immediately take action and create a standard for the regulation, the EPA deferred to a U.N. agency consumed by the issue.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, Triple Pundit.
Airplane image via Shutterstock.
