Oceana joins with Northern and Southern Leaders to Petition for Arctic Protections in the Face of Global Climate Change

On Tuesday, November 25th Oceana and other partners, including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Native Village of Shishmaref, Alaska, petitioned the federal government to protect the health and welfare of the Arctic and, ultimately, the world by establishing comprehensive regulations for greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The petition brings forth extensive scientific information on climate change impacts already happening in the Arctic and how those impacts will affect the rest of the planet, and requests the Environmental Protection Agency take immediate actions to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The Petition:

The Arctic Climate Change Petition calls on the agency to use its authority to protect the health and welfare of the Arctic and, ultimately, all of us, by regulating greenhouse gas emissions. It urges the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to move quickly to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in light of the impacts already being felt in Arctic regions across the world, but more specifically in Alaska.

The petition also:

• Calls upon the EPA to implement a comprehensive system of greenhouse gas emission regulations to stop global warming and ocean acidification without negatively affecting our economy, and thereby protect American citizens, the rest of the Arctic, and the world.
• Requests immediate action to adopt these regulations and acknowledge the imperative that the United States work with other countries in an effort to develop an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to a sustainable level below 350 parts per million.
• States that in undertaking these efforts, the United States and other countries must maintain a strong economy by making a strategic transition to renewable energy sources and infrastructure.

The petition describes the impacts climate change is having in the Arctic right now and makes the case that EPA must regulate greenhouse gases using the authority granted it under the Clean Air Act to protect the public health and welfare. The petitioners chose this approach because the authority the Clean Air Act grants EPA is currently the only mechanism through which a federal agency could regulate emissions of greenhouse gases.

From the Executive Summary:

For much of the last three decades, the United States government has been at the center of a vociferous debate about global climate change. Domestic arguments about the effects and causes of climate change prevented any meaningful action to address the problem at a national level. That part of the debate has ended; the climate is changing, and humans are causing it. Emissions of greenhouse gases from human sources-such as cars, trucks, power plants, aircraft, and marine vessels-are warming the Earth, altering climate, and acidifying the oceans.

For most people in the United States and the world, changes caused by greenhouse gas emissions have not yet greatly affected day-to-day life. The same cannot be said for the communities, peoples and wildlife of the Arctic, where the climate is warming on average at about twice the rate of the rest of the world. The Arctic is home to four million people and sensitive, functioning ecosystems. Its inhabitants are seeing their very way of life threatened as sea ice is lost, ecosystems are restructured, and weather patterns change. The dramatic effects already being seen in the Arctic are measurable and are only the beginning.

The rapid warming now occurring in the Arctic has worldwide implications, and the decline of Arctic sea ice, in particular, provides measurable evidence suggesting that we may be approaching a point beyond which dangerous interference with the global climate system will result in significant impacts to the rest of the United States and the world.

This formal petition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gives voice to those concerns and calls upon the United States to accept its legal and moral responsibility to protect the Arctic so as to safeguard the public health and welfare. The petition itself presents a scientific explanation of the effects climate change is having in the Arctic and the ways those changes affect the rest of the United States and the world. Relying on the United States Supreme Court's landmark holding in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, this petition makes the case that EPA is obligated to regulate greenhouse gases in order to protect the public health and welfare. It argues that, in exercising its authority, EPA must act equitably, to ensure that regulatory burdens are not placed unfairly, and wisely, to maintain economic opportunities.

Scientific evidence suggests that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide must be reduced to no more than 350 parts per million in order to preserve a planet similar to the one to which life on Earth is adapted. While international cooperation will be necessary to achieve that goal, the United States has the moral and legal responsibility to lead the way by establishing a measurable trajectory for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. The success of this effort can be measured by the health of the Arctic, and, while it is not yet too late, the changes already occurring there make it clear that greenhouse gas reductions must begin now.

Petitioners:

• Oceana
• The Honorable Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco, California
• The Native Village of Shishmaref, Alaska
• The Honorable Bruce Botelho, Mayor of Juneau, Alaska
• Ocean Conservancy
• The Honorable Dan Cort, Mayor of Pacific Grove, California
• The Honorable James Hornaday, Mayor of Homer, Alaska
• Deborah Williams, Alaska Conservation Solutions

Download the petition (3MB)

Related links:

• Learn more about the Arctic
• Learn more about protecting the Arctic from Industrial Fishing