White House memo reveals rifts on climate regulations - May 12, 2009
For anybody under the impression that Barack Obama has overcome all opposition and instilled a general sense of agreement on climate regulation throughout the many halls of U.S. government, this White House memo will come as shocking news. (Fair warning: Those who suspected that Obama might need a little time to impose complete order might be less surprised.)
For background, regulatory proposals in the United States generally go through a round of inter-agency review coordinated by the White House Office of Management and Budget. And so it was with the Environmental Protection Agency, which proposed last month to formally declare greenhouse gases a danger to "public health and welfare," thereby opening the door to direct regulation under the Clean Air Act.
A record of that process, titled "Deliberative-Attorney Client Privilege" and filed under OMB's name, surfaced with much fanfare during a Senate hearing today. The document, which acknowledges that regulating greenhouse gases would have "serious economic consequences," has been hailed as the "smoking gun" memo by Republican senators. House Republican Leader John Boehner says the memo is evidence that EPA put "special-interests ahead of middle-class families and small businesses."
Fair enough. There is indeed a tendency for proponents of climate legislation to pretend that there will be no economic pain, which clearly isn't true. But the notion that restructuring the economy to account for carbon dioxide pollution could have serious economic consequences is hardly controversial. The disagreements are over how those consequences will play out and whether the positive effects (including green jobs, health, environmental security) will outweigh the negatives (higher energy prices, job losses in dirty industries). The document also reveals an internal debate about things like regulatory precedents and how to frame the science. For instance:
"The finding rests heavily on the precautionary principle, but the
amount of acknowledged lack of understanding about basic facts
surrounding GHGs seem to stretch the precautionary principle to
providing for regulation in the face of unprecedented uncertainty."
In other places, however, it reads more like the critique a careful editor might offer a writer, suggesting that certain arguments could be "fleshed out more thoroughly" and that the finding "could be strengthened by including additional information on benefits, costs, and risks (where this information exists)".
In the end, it is hardly surprising that there were differing views about the finding. EPA certainly isn't the first agency in the world to suggest that global warming is a problem, but that doesn't mean it should unilaterally tackle the problem under existing law. Indeed, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said as much when she released the proposal. The question is whether Congress is going to fill the regulatory void.
Comments
Jeff Tollefson's point is well taken - it is disingenuous for the Administration to imply that climate change mitigation will be free of costs, although given the exaggerated claims from critics, the tendency to downplay costs does, I suppose, exert some sort of balance, and reminds us that politics is not science. In this case, the science underlying the EPA endangerment finding is compelling, and the case for anticipating potentially devastating economic and human costs from inaction also compelling.
I suspect that this story will not be newsworthy for very long, because it turns out that the federal staff member who warned in the memo of dire economic hardship from regulation was not speaking for the current Administration, but was a non-scientist member of the Small Business Administration who is a holdover from the Bush years.
Posted by: Fred Moolten | May 13, 2009 02:38 AM
Please update your post to reflect new information that the "memo" wasn't from the White House, nor was it a memo but a single comment on an interagency comment document from a non-scientist, non-economist Bush administration holdover.
This single comment was misreported by one media outlet, subsequently spun by Republicans in Congress, then dutifully broadcast by the major media. http://www.grist.org/article/2009-05-13-omb-epa-sba-endangerment/
This is a political non-story manufactured out of whole cloth. Please update your post to reflect the new information.
Posted by: Science First | May 13, 2009 09:33 PM