The Environmental Protection Agency released an ?endangerment finding? regarding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions last week.
EPA said greenhouse gas emissions ?threaten the public health and welfare of the American people? and should be regulated.
This ?threat,? according to EPA, includes both current and new motor vehicles and engines, which would be regulated under the Clean Air Act based on this finding.
This announcement came just in time for climate change meetings at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
It was intended to send a message to the world that the U.S. considers global warming a major issue and is prepared to lead the way to combat it.
In response to the EPA announcement, a free-market group, The Competitive Enterprise Institute, promptly announced its plan to sue.
CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman said, ?EPA is clinging for dear life to the notion that the global climate models are holding up.
?In reality, those models are about to sink under the growing weight of evidence that they are fabrications,? he added, citing the hacked e-mails between global warming scientists that leaked last week.
