Breaking loose from its wrong, Bush-era policies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now plans to ask all companies in the United States to reveal exactly how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit in the atmosphere. This is a first for the federal agency, which has been tied up by the previous administration. George W. Bush was obviously not a president of the people, but one of the coal and oil companies, as proven by the last decisions he passed through before finally leaving the White House, after eight years of devastation of the environment.

Leaving that aside, the new legislation proposed by the federal agency sets an obligation for roughly 13,000 facilities nationwide to submit detailed reports of the amounts of CO2 they emit each year, as well as their plans to limit those amounts, or any reference to transactions with carbon credits. The decision would also apply to companies that import fossil fuels, or chemicals that emit greenhouse gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and CO2 through burning.

The rule covers about 6 types of gases, and those who would have to report to EPA include the automobile industry, fossil fuel-powered plants, large manure ponds at farms, and coal mines, as well as some in the chemical industry. The federal agency hopes that, by centralizing figures from all these sectors, it could get a better view of the extent of the damage that these facilities make on an already-fragile environment, which has prompted more intense storms and hurricanes by now, as well as more intense droughts in parts of the United States.

“Our efforts to confront climate change must be guided by the best possible information,” Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, told the media in a statement that announced the proposed regulation. “These emissions reporting rules are a welcome foundation for any serious program to curb global warming pollution,” the Climate Policy Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council environmental group, David Doniger, added. According to the federal agency, it will be in 2011 that companies will have to pass on their first reports, and EPA estimates that the registries will cost them about $127 million each year.