He Helped Write the Clean Air Act. He Fears for Its Future

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By Karen Zraick, The New York Times. 

Excerpt: Thomas Jorling, adviser to Republicans who cosponsored the 1970 law, disputes the Trump administration’s claim that it shouldn’t apply to planet-warming greenhouse gases. ...When the Trump administration took the extraordinary step this year of killing the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, it made a simple argument: The Clean Air Act doesn’t allow it. Thomas Jorling, who helped write the Clean Air Act, disagrees. The 1970 Clean Air Act became law ...when climate change wasn’t as widely recognized a threat. But Mr. Jorling said in a recent interview that he and the other authors of the legislation had known that scientists would continue learning about new pollutants, and so the bill was meant to be flexible enough to encompass them. Regulating planet-warming emissions is “perfectly consistent with the Clean Air Act,” he said. ...In February, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked what is known as the “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific conclusion by the agency that greenhouse gases endanger human health.... 

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