Climate Feedback

EPA trashes its own report

In case anyone doubted the Bush administration’s resolve on climate policy during these last lame-duck months, they’ve just used the thump of a 500-page EPA report hitting the bin to hammer it home.


cartoon.jpgA little backstory: Friday’s new public report is a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in April 2007 that the agency should either assess the damage done by greenhouse gases or provide a good reason why not. When the White House received a draft in December, its response was to refuse to open the email it came in.

That emailed version said greenhouse gases could indeed endanger human health and welfare – a finding that would trigger a regulatory rescue (a regulatory train wreck, said the White House) by the EPA under the Clean Air Act. The version that has now emerged into the light of day has accordingly undergone an endangermentectomy.

The Washington Post prefaced a gorily detailed saga of White House-EPA wrangling with this summary:

To defer compliance with the Supreme Court’s demand, the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials’ congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes in computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action.

On climate policy blog Prometheus, Roger Pielke, Jr, complained last week that some of this is normal politics hyped up by the “breathless” press. (But you know, a testimony cut here, a simulation nudge there, and soon you’re talking about real interference.)

What’s definitely not normal is releasing a cabinet-level report with 85 pages of undermining criticism from other departments attached. In the end, the EPA didn’t just cut out the draft’s endangerment finding – its director, Stephen Johnson, slammed the surviving regulatory suggestions in a cover letter. Said the New York Times:

In effect, Mr. Johnson was simultaneously publishing the policy analysis of his scientific and legal experts and repudiating its conclusions.

The final flourish: Johnson called for four months of public comment on the repudiated rules – punting the decision to McCain or Obama. Here’s what they had to say (Wall Street Journal, subscription required):

A spokesman for Sen. Obama said he was “disappointed in the White House’s decision to again refuse to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.” A spokesman for Sen. McCain said the approach outlined by the EPA “would give a small, unelected group of bureaucrats unprecedented power to regulate broad swaths of our economy — effectively placing production, employment and investment decisions under government control.”

Anna Barnett

Cartoon by Ali Shahali, courtesy of the Union of Concerned Scientists ‘Scientific Integrity’ cartoon contest – vote here.

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