Straight from the “Wait, what? We haven’t done this already?” department, the Environmental Protection Agency is set to declare carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant.

EPA chief Lisa Jackson announced the decision yesterday, and apparently this goes beyond just making formal information everyone already knew anyway. Reports the San Francisco Chronicle:

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told reporters that a formal “endangerment finding,” which would trigger federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, probably would “happen in the next months.” [...] A formal endangerment finding would obligate the agency to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act–even if Congress doesn’t pass a final climate-change bill.

As Congress has slowed its roll on the climate change bill it’s been working on, the EPA basically is saying “If you guys are gonna drop the ball–-hard-–we’ll be here to pick up your slack. So maybe you guys should work on it?” The hope is, then, that Congress will get its act together (again) to make something happen.

Isn’t it weird that we have to state that carbon dioxide is dangerous just to enact political change? Not because…I don’t know…it is? Seems silly. Wait. What’s that? It’s the federal government? Okay. Now it makes sense.

photo credit: dantekgeek’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons