(NaturalNews) The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a strong warning that global warming will have "substantial human health impacts" within the next few decades. The warning came in a report released only days after the same agency declined to regulate global warming-causing greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
"Today typifies the climate-change schizophrenia in the Bush administration," said U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, chair of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "On one hand, government scientists are saying that
global warming poses grave threats to our
health and our welfare, and, on the other hand, [there] are White House political hacks following the oil industry's bidding to do nothing."
The
EPA report warns that rising temperatures will cause air quality to worsen in Eastern cities, as well as more deaths among the elderly, the poor and inner-city dwellers during future heat waves.
"It's going to be hotter; it's going to be hotter sooner in the year than it was in the past," said co-author Kristie Ebi. Young people now living near
Washington "[are] going to look back and think back about how nice the summers used to be," she said. "Within 20, 30 years, on average, the [public] should notice that it's warmer."
Global warming is also likely to lead to more frequent and powerful hurricanes, dwindling
water supplies in the West, loss of coastal land to rising sea levels and storm surges, and the more rapid spread of food- and water-borne illnesses.
According to the EPA's former deputy associate administrator, Jason K. Burnett, the president's deputy chief of staff for policy originally approved an EPA decision to regulate
greenhouse gas emissions as air
pollutants, a move supported by several cabinet members and senior administration officials. Before the decision could be made official, however, the White House prohibited the EPA from taking action.
Sources for this story include:
www.washingtonpost.com.
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