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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

EPA: Greenhouse Gases a "Danger" to Human Health and Welfare

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Monday, April 20, 2009   

Richmond - There's a full-speed-ahead sign posted for Virginia's clean energy plans: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse cases are pollutants that threaten the public health and welfare. The finding comes two years after the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the EPA's authority to regulate such pollution under the Clean Air Act.

Virginia House of Delegates member Joe Bouchard is a Democrat who represents the 83rd District in Virginia Beach. He also served on the Virginia Climate Change Commission, and says that while the federal action is encouraging, Virginia is poised to go further.

"Greenhouse gas reduction goals can be achieved through promotion of renewable energy, conservation, the green economy."

Bouchard says the EPA ruling is notable for what it does not do.

"This EPA policy change does not require very strict regulations and sanctions; that is not at all what's intended here."

What is intended, Bouchard says, is paving the way for discussion and plans for a new energy economy that doesn't rely on greenhouse gases.

Bouchard says the Virginia commission already has a plan that points the way toward transforming the state's economy away from foreign oil and toward clean energy and efficiency.

The EPA ruling goes hand in hand with Congressional legislation seeking to regulate greenhouse gases; hearings on that proposal are scheduled for this week.

Utilities, auto manufacturers and other companies say they expected this decision, and hope go before Congress to address their concerns over the costs of these changes.


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