Next on Obama agenda: pollution from airplanes

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration Monday announced its plan to start regulating planet-warming pollution from airplanes, setting off a battle between environmentalists and the airline industry.

The plan to curb airplane emissions comes as President Barack Obama looks to strengthen his climate change legacy with new policies in the waning months of his administration. The airline rules would be among the final pieces of his sweeping and contentious second-term climate agenda — it has included rules to rein in greenhouse pollution from cars, trucks and power plants — and his role in forging last year’s Paris Agreement, the accord committing nearly 200 countries to take action to reduce emissions that are warming the planet.

The Environmental Protection Agency released the aviation plan, known as an “endangerment finding,” which concludes that the planet-warming pollution produced by airplanes endangers human health by contributing to climate change. The endangerment finding does not include the details of a regulation, but it sets off a legal requirement under the Clean Air Act for the EPA to establish a rule.

“Addressing pollution from aircraft is an important element of U.S. efforts to address climate change,” said Janet McCabe, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator for air and radiation. “EPA has already set effective greenhouse gas standards for cars and trucks and any future aircraft engine standards will also provide important climate and public health benefits.”

The announcement does not include a timetable for releasing the rule, but people tracking the administration’s climate change policies say it is possible that the EPA could release a draft rule by early January, most likely making it Obama’s last climate action. However, the next administration would have the authority to rewrite the draft rule.

Lobbyists for the airline industry said that the international standards reflected the limits of the best available technology.

“You cannot adopt a standard that you don’t know you can meet for an aircraft. Safety is job No. 1 in aviation. And if you say maybe we can push technology to meet this, that’s a worry,” said Nancy Young, the vice president for environmental affairs at trade group Airlines for America.