It's O(bama)fficial: Greenhouse Gases Threaten Public Health

We're inching ever closer to taking nationwide, comprehensive, and maybe even effective action towards curbing global warming.  Waiting for Earth Day be damned, the Obama administration has announced today that, in the eyes of the US federal government as represented by the Environmental Protection Agency, super-duper officially, greenhouse gases are air pollution that can endanger public health and welfare:

This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation,” said Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “This pollution problem has a solution – one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”

As the proposed endangerment finding states, “In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.”

EPA's finding covers six particular gases:  carbon dioxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride, nitrous oxide and methane.  Including the latter two gases will likely spur some really interesting back room discussions in DC in coming weeks, since the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill specifically omits industrial agriculture from carbon cap-and-trade controls.

Why is this a potentially big problem?  As Meredith Niles notes at Grist [emphasis mine],

Enteric fermentation [[burps and farts from livestock, primarily cows and pigs]] is literally the largest source of methane emissions in the entire country.  This means that not only are livestock left out of this bill, but the largest source of methane emissions would be left out of all future regulations for methane emissions in the United States from the uncapped sector.

...Who really cares about cow farts anyway when we have coal fired power plants to deal with?  I respectfully disagree... Collectively, our entire food system and associated emissions may be contributing up to 1/3 of global greenhouse emissions by some scientific accounts.  Domestically, the agricultural sector (which doesn’t include things like food processing, packaging and transportation) accounts for nearly 2/3 of all nitrous oxide emissions, which by the Markey and Waxman bill is 298 times as potent as CO2.  About 1/3 of all methane emissions (which is 25 times as potent as CO2) in the United States are solely from enteric fermentation and manure management.

All in all, according to EPA, US industrial ag operations account for around 400 million metric tons, or teragrams, of CO2 equivalent emissions*, or "Tg CO2 Eq." -- about a full fifth of the greenhouse gas pollution we pour in to the atmosphere annually.

So even if the prospect of dealing with the Environmental Protection Agency nudges Big Business and Industry to throw in behind Waxman-Markey (both President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson have said they prefer a cap-and-trade system over new regulations), does that still leave Big Ag staring at a new slew of regulations to cap, control, and cut greenhouse gas pollution?

* Tg CO2 Eq:  Different greenhouse gases affect the atmosphere at varied rates.  Since CO2 is the prevalent human-caused greenhouse gas, however, measurements of the others -- methane, hydrofluorocarbons, etc. -  are often expressed in "CO2 equivalents."  Methane retains heat in the atmosphere about 21 times more powerfully than than CO2.  So 1 million metric tons, or teragrams (Tg), of methane emissions would have the equivalent impact on the climate as 21 Tg of CO2.

Image: The "Keeling Curve" charting increases in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions based on records from the Mauna Loa measuring station.  Created by Robert A. Rohde from NOAA published data; via Wikimedia Commons.