RE: PHYSICAL DEATH CAME THROUGH SIN (Genesis 3:19):

“ALL PEOPLE die because Adam’s original sin. Progressive Creationism denies this, saying that animals died for millions of years before Adam and implying that Adam too was doomed to physically die, regardless of sin.” [Emphasis mine] (CAT-16)

I disagree, the position of most OEC (and PC) is that all people die (physically and spiritually) because of Adam’s original sin. So, there is total agreement with the first sentence cited above, between the views of OEC and YEC. Human death- physical and spiritual- are a direct result of Adam’s original sin. There is no disagreement as CAT would have us believe. Where the two views depart is in the area of animal death. The writing of CAT in the first sentence cited above speaks plainly about human death but then the thought suddenly switches. This illustrates the problem. For the authors of CAT and many YEC- human death is just as tragic as animal death. Put another way, if human death came about by sin, then so did animal death. In general, there seems to be a great tendency to anthromorphy animals in this way. OEC recognizes that the physical death of animal and plants (creation without spirit) is not the same as the physical death of humans (creation with spirit).

RE: Adam's Potential Lifespan
Many OEC would go on to say that humanity was not doomed to die before the fall of Adam and Eve (pre-destination/free-will aside- that is a whole other matter). The possibility of death was indeed there, but this fate was to be avoided by the access to the tree of life. Hence, when the fate of mortality was introduced to humanity, God bared access to the sustaining tree of life.

RE: Paul's Understanding
On page 16-17 CAT states that in Romans 5:12,14-15 Paul clearly teaches that all death was brought about by the Fall in the Garden of Eden. But Hugh Ross’ organization, Reasons to Believe, addresses this claim on their website:

A careful examination of Romans 5:12 shows that Adam's sin introduced death to all humans, not to all life forms on earth. Plant and animal death in no way attributes evil or cruelty to the Creator. Furthermore, a biblical and scientific case can be made that the laws of physics as known today have been in operation since the creation of the universe[1].

The standard YEC interpretation is that sin subjected all living things to physical death and the introduced of carnivorous activity to nature. But Paul says that sin brought about the death of humans (Genesis 2:17 and Romans 5:12). The Bible provides no basis for the notion that sin brought about death of animals. The YEC contention that carnivorous activity began after the fall is also without a biblical foundation. Such ideas are in direct contradiction to scripture. Such a drastic change in animal behavior would require God to continue or resume the creation process - something Scriptures indicate He stopped doing after the 6th day (Genesis 2:3 and Hebrews 4:4). But if this were the case, then God must have changed some of the animals to become carnivorous. That begs the question “why would God judge the innocent animals for the sin of mankind and condemn them to the ‘evil’ laws of survival of the fittest?”

Footnotes:

[1] http://www.reasons.org/about/8_myths_about_rtb.shtml, accessed 6.24.2007

To Learn more: http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/other_papers/animal_death_before_the_fall.shtml, accessed 6.26.2007
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/other_papers/creature_mortality.shtml , accessed 6.26.2007

"A Matter of Days"; Ross Hugh; Nvapress; 2004.