Editorial

Fairbanks residents have a history of dealing with air quality issues and the regulatory approach used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address them. So we should understand easily why that approach is the wrong one to address the latest pollutant that plagues us — carbon dioxide.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski and 41 other senators also understand this, which is why they have pushed a resolution to bar the EPA from using the regulatory structure developed under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon dioxide as a way to combat global warming. That “resolution of disapproval” should come before the U.S. Senate for a vote next week. It deserves passage.

Fairbanks first tried to solve its carbon monoxide — not dioxide — problem with mandatory inspection and maintenance of vehicles in the borough.  Now we’re trying to reduce particulates in our air. Setting aside lingering skepticism about whether these pollutants are really so bad that they need expensive interventions, most people can recognize that the regulatory system used to combat them is rational and targets the specific pollution problem.

Both local efforts arose because Fairbanks violated the EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards for these pollutants. Those are the standards that the EPA sets for pollutants that “endanger” public health, as it has concluded carbon dioxide does.

So the EPA expects to set a standard for carbon dioxide. It will be something lower than current carbon dioxide levels, which are approaching 390 parts per million in the air and are steadily rising. Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation will get to work meeting the new standard by limiting emission sources. It will give the Fairbanks North Star Borough first crack at the problem, as it did with carbon monoxide and particulates. Every state across the nation will do the same.

As part of the effort, the EPA also will require operating permits for emission sources that exceed 100 tons of carbon dioxide per year and new construction permits for plants that create 250 tons per year, because that’s what the Clean Air Act says it must do. That sounds like a lot of carbon dioxide, but many buildings and even small manufacturers produce that much. A single pickup truck driving 10,000 miles per year at 20 mpg produces 5 tons of carbon dioxide.

The EPA and states have issued about 15,000 operating and construction permits combined across the nation in recent years. But, because so many enterprises — public and private — produce so much carbon dioxide, the EPA will need to review millions of operating applications and thousands of construction applications if carbon emissions come under its purview. Recognizing the absurdity of this, the agency has proposed a way to ignore the smaller sources, but the proposal appears to contradict the Clean Air Act and would be vulnerable to lawsuits — either from environmental groups who want stricter rules or from industry groups looking for any way to topple the program.

All these limits and costly regulations might be worthwhile if, as with carbon monoxide and particulates, the result would be substantially less carbon dioxide in the air — the kind of reduction that climate models indicate is necessary to limit warming. Unfortunately, that result isn’t anticipated.

All the rules and regulations will put only a small dent in global carbon dioxide levels, if any. That’s because of two factors. First, carbon dioxide is a rapidly dispersed component of our air and it spreads globally. Second, the heavily populated, developing parts of our globe are not interested in limiting their carbon dioxide emissions.

Advocates of limiting our own emissions say that other nations will follow if we lead. That may be so, but then let’s lead in a rational fashion. If the United States is to limit carbon emissions, it must do so with a system that either taxes carbon or sets a total cap on emissions that creates a market in which the worst pollution is traded away first. Those ideas are fraught with problems and uncertainties as well, but they are far preferable to an old-fashioned, bureaucratic permit system.

We’re playing with fire here; we don’t want to get burned. Murkowski’s resolution is an apt extinguisher.