The Obama administration is proposing to declare that airplanes' greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to public health and welfare, the first legal step toward imposing climate change regulations on airlines.
The decision is a win for environmentalists, and comes just as the Environmental Protection Agency is finishing its contentious climate change rules for power plants.
But it is not clear how stringent any future rules for airplanes will be, and writing climate rules solely for airlines operating in the U.S. could be tricky given the international nature of the industry. Many observers predict EPA will ultimately issue regulations in line with targets that a United Nations aviation body is expected to set in 2016.
EPA expects to finalize its aircraft greenhouse gas finding next year, and to write climate rules following that.
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