Not for the first time, a federal court has slapped down the Bush administration for going too far to peel back the Clean Air Act.
This time, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out an Environmental Protection Agency rule that exempted major industrial polluters from measuring dangerous emissions at oil refineries and power plants.
The court, in a 2-1 decision, held that the EPA violated the Clean Air Act by allowing the largest air pollution sources to avoid monitoring, recording and record keeping of air pollution emissions. The judges also said states can enact monitoring requirements that are tougher than federal guidelines.
"This is a huge victory for everyone who breathes," said Keri Powell, an attorney for the environmental group Earth Justice. "We can't have strong enforcement of our clean air laws unless we know what polluters are putting into the air."
Eric Schaeffer of the Environmental Integrity Project called the government action part of EPA's "seven-year campaign to unravel the Clean Air Act." "The court understood that emission standards that aren't monitored can never be enforced."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Smog covers downtown Los Angeles in September 2006. Credit: Gabriel Bouys / AFP/Getty
From his post in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, F. Chase Hutto III has had his hands in a variety of issues.
There was the debate over clean air and global warming. By all accounts, he helped scuttle the course favored by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency for stronger regulations intended to fight emissions of greenhouse gases, as Countdown to Crawford reported a month ago.
There was the time the administration was considering greater restrictions on smog-forming ozone; he opposed them. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration rule to protect North Atlantic right whales? The Bush administration is reportedly about to scale it back. Hutto was in deep on that one, too.
His role was tracked by the Washington Post, which reports today that the administration has a new job in mind for him: He will be promoted, the Post reports, from his staff position in Cheney's office to assistant secretary of energy.
The result: One of the most ardent opponents of government regulation within the government would be put in a key decision-making position where global warming policies are set.
Said Jason K. Burnett, who as a deputy associate administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency tangled with Hutto over global warming until leaving the government: "I can't think of a case where Chase advocated more environmental or health protections."
As for placing Hutto in the Energy Department at this late date, the Post, quoting Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists, notes: "In coming months, Hutto could make policy decisions that the next administration would find difficult to reverse quickly."
The Bush administration is proposing a major change in the way the federal government decides whether wildlife and plants deserve protection under the Endangered Species Act.
Critics say the move, which is subject to a 30-day comment period before it can be put into effect, would dramatically weaken what has long been seen as a crucial law saving plants, animals, birds and fish from extinction.
The Interior Department unveiled a plan under which independent scientific reviews, which for three decades have been required to determine the protection status of potentially endangered species, would be eliminated. Instead, individual federal agencies would determine whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects.
The Washington Post noted that "under current law, agencies must subject any plans that potentially affect endangered animals and plants to an independent review by the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The paper added:
Under the proposed new rules, dam and highway construction and other federal projects could proceed without delay if the agency in charge decides they would not harm vulnerable species.
It was the second time in recent months that the administration moved away from reliance on the views of government scientists to put more decision making in the hands of agencies run by political appointees.
In a key decision at the Environmental Protection Agency dealing with global warming, senior officials circumvented the recommendations of professional staff scientists and yielded to pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney's office to relax regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement the change in the way the Endangered Species Act is carried out represented "another in a continuing stream of proposals to repeal our landmark environmental laws through the back door."
Footnote: Within hours after the Associated Press reported the proposed shift, an environmental group, the Endangered Species Coalition, had used it as the basis for an e-mail fundraising appeal, saying the plan "abandons the nation's commitment to protect endangered species from global warming and fast-tracks oil and gas mining, logging and development regardless of the impacts to our nation's wildlife, fish and plants on the brink of extinction."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo of bald eagle: James Gerstenzang / Los Angeles Times
Increased ethanol in U.S. gasoline has been blamed for a wide swath of global ills -- not the least of them global warming and escalating food prices. Efforts to lower the amount of ethanol blended into the fuel supply brought the conservative Republican governor of Texas, Rick Perry, and several environmental groups into the same camp as they tried to persuade the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency to relax the ethanol-to-gasoline ratio.
That effort came to naught today. The EPA announced that it would not lower the so-called Renewable Fuel Standard, despite concerns about emissions and food prices.
Perry, who succeeded President Bush as governor of Texas, had asked the environmental agency in April to waive a requirement that 9 million gallons of ethanol and other renewable fuels be blended into gasoline this year. He said that by putting increasing demands on the supply of corn, the mandate was pushing up the cost of food and animal feed.
He was responding to a requirement imposed last December by Congress in an effort to lower fuel costs and make the United States less dependent on foreign oil.
But EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson said this afternoon: "After reviewing the facts, it was clear this request did not meet the criteria in the law."
Perry had sought a 50% cut in the amount of ethanol to be blended into the gasoline supply.
The EPA said this couldn't be done in time to have an impact this year on corn, food or fuel prices.
Response to the decision fell along predictable lines:
The Environmental Working Group's director of government affairs, Sandra Schubert, called the mandate "misguided" and said it was "forcing farmers to plow up marginal land and wildlife habitat while increasing global warming and dumping toxic fertilizers and pesticides into our precious water sources."
"America should be focusing on viable clean energy solutions like conservation, solar and wind," she said.
The president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, Jim Greenwood, said the decision sent "a strong message that we must continue moving forward toward sustainable production of advanced biofuels" to cut dependence on important oil and to increase biofuel production from non-food sources.
His organization represents biotech companies, among others involved in expanding the use of biofuels.
Barack Obama's effort on Tuesday to link John McCain to Vice President Dick Cheney went something like this: McCain and President Bush favor offshore drilling. The vice president headed an energy task force that developed the Bush administration policies. Therefore, McCain and Cheney are in bed when it comes to energy.
In the world of political shorthand, that would seem pretty linear: From A to B to C.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee put it this way in Youngstown, Ohio: "McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook."
It's not the way Shannen Coffin writing in the National Review Online sees it.
Coffin calls Obama's criticism of Cheney "as incoherent as his energy policy."
The NRO item notes this quote from Obama's remarks:
President Bush, he had an energy policy. He turned to Dick Cheney and he said, 'Cheney, go take care of this.' Cheney met with renewable-energy folks once and oil and gas [executives] 40 times. McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney playbook.
Coffin writes that the Illinois senator's criticism suggests that the Cheney task force's recommendations were "all drill and no renewable energy," and notes that the panel's report included a full chapter on renewable energy resources.
Indeed, the article observes:
Obama voted for the Bush White House's energy legislation that stemmed from the report's recommendations in 2005 — a vote that could be viewed as endearing if he hadn't more recently flipped on it as well.
And it notes that Obama, in a Las Vegas television interview this week, said his support for the bill "was motivated by the fact that this was the largest investment in alternative energy in history."
President Bush began the day with a renewed pitch to Congress to join him in dropping the ban on offshore exploration for oil. To listen to him, it is only the Democratic-led Congress that is holding up drilling--and thus, by his reasoning, holding up oil prices.
Hours later, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) fired back: "The president knows, as his own administration has stated, that the impact of any new drilling will be insignificant--promising savings of only pennies per gallon many years down the road."
And for those who say that the drilling would be beyond the horizon, perhaps 50 miles offshore, she added: "What Americans should realize is that what the president is calling for is drilling as close as three miles off of America's pristine beaches and in other protected areas."
Next up? The president speaks Thursday in West Virginia. No ocean beaches there--but there is plenty of coal.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said Bush would talk about using technology to make coal a cleaner source of energy and the expansion of nuclear power.
With Congress rushing toward its summer recess -- and his own departure from Washington looming -- President Bush challenged House and Senate leaders (meaning, in this case, Democrats) once again to do what he knows they aren't about to do: open up the open waters for offshore oil and gas exploration.
He trooped his Cabinet into the sweltering Rose Garden this morning to reinforce his message that "the only thing now standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is the United States Congress."
Bush's target is a congressional ban on drilling -- which remains in effect apart from his lifting of an executive ban on such operations in the deep waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.
"The sooner Congress lifts the ban, the sooner we can get this oil from the ocean floor to your gas tank," he said -- making clear that his real audience was not the Congress, but Americans at the height of the summer vacation season contemplating the cost of car travel at $4 a gallon.
Working against the calendar, the president has made energy supplies and high prices a singular focus. Along with Congress, he is about to head out of town.
First, there is a long weekend at his family summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine -- where Walker's Point sits right on the Gulf of Maine and offers a fine vantage for watching the work of an oil rig, were one placed on the horizon. Then, after a visit to Asia built around the opening of the Beijing Olympics, he is planning to spend a few weeks at his own home in Crawford, Texas.
But longer range, of course, he is about to head out of town permanently. The energy situation is one of the few pressing matters that remain on his plate with even a remote chance of resolution.
Resign. They want EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson to resign.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and and three Democrats on her committee charged today that the Bush administration's head of the Environmental Protection Agency has given misleading testimony before Congress, refused to cooperate with congressional oversight committees and based agency decision-making on political considerations rather than scientific evidence or the rule of law.
The senators called on Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to investigate Johnson for inconsistencies in his testimony with an eye toward perjury.
In testimony before their committee, Johnson was asked why the EPA denied California’s request for a waiver under the Clean Air Act. The state wanted to set higher standards than the federal government for combating global warming emissions from vehicles and needed a waiver.
But, said the senators, he lied. Worse, he was pushed by the White House.
Their case against him was outlined in a lengthy press release e-mailed to reporters tonight:
On Dec. 19, 2007, Administrator Johnson denied a request by California for a waiver of the Clean Air Act that would permit the states to set tough standards on global warming pollution from motor vehicles. This was the first time in over 50 instances that EPA has ever denied outright a California waiver request. In sworn testimony before the Committee, Administrator Johnson stated that he based his decision on California’s failure to meet criteria required under the Clean Air Act, and said that the decision was "mine and mine alone." Many other states, including Rhode Island, have adopted California’s standards, or are in the process of adopting them, but all are barred from implementing the standards unless California receives a waiver from EPA.
However, former Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett testified last week that Mr. Johnson had in fact determined that California had met Clean Air Act criteria necessary for approval of the waiver, and had communicated to the administration that he intended to grant the waiver in part. Mr. Burnett further testified that Administrator Johnson only reversed course and denied the waiver after White House officials informed him of President Bush’s "policy preference" for a single regulatory system -– even though the Clean Air Act clearly contemplates a dual system in cases where the statutory criteria for the waiver are met.
While we're on the subject of global warming, when it comes to reducing the emission of greenhouse gases from industry -- meaning, for example, aluminum smelters, landfills, coal mines and large farms -- President Bush has put great stock in voluntary programs.
Not the way to go, according to the inspector general's office of Bush's own Environmental Protection Agency.
It is "unlikely" that voluntary programs would reduce more than 19% the greenhouse gas emissions that are projected for various industries in 2010, the inspector general said in a report on Bush's program.
"If EPA wishes to reduce GHG emissions beyond this point, it needs to consider additional policy options," the report said.
The study blamed the reluctance of industry to take part in a voluntary reduction program and unreliable data about claimed reductions for the failure of efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions from non-carbon sources such as motor vehicles and power plants.
Senate Republicans blocked a new effort to obtain Bush administration documents on global warming -- and did so today by doing nothing.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is already looking into whether higher-ups in the administration -- and perhaps someone in Vice President Dick Cheney's office -- tried to squelch a finding that global warming would harm the nation's welfare.
And the Bush administration has tried to turn aside the committee's efforts to subpoena the EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, and another official as it tries to find out whether the Bush administration's refusal to let California implement a tailpipe emissions law was based on politics rather than on science and law.
Today, the Senate Environment Committee sought to subpoena EPA papers that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the committee, said had concluded that "the welfare of the American people is endangered if steps are not taken to avoid the ravages of unchecked global warming." She read them under an agreement that blocks wider distribution.
According to excerpts the committee released, the December, 2007, EPA document said that in the agency's judgment, "the elevated, combined atmospheric concentrations of the six greenhouse gases are reasonably anticipated to endanger public welfare."
Why did Johnson conclude that the nation's welfare would be hurt? Because, the document states, the sea level will continue to rise, exacerbating "storm surge flooding and shoreline erosion; heat waves will be more intense and last longer, wildfires will worsen, and water resources will be strained."
Bottom line: More greenhouse gases will make life worse in the United States.
Boxer's effort to get broader access to the report, however, was turned aside. It takes two Republicans to join the majority Democrats to issue a subpoena.
None showed up.
Our colleague Richard Simon reports, however, that Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the committee, issued a press release calling Boxer's efforts "a political exercise that is intended to score more political points to help keep this issue of alleged administration interference alive in the press as long as possible."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Sen. Barbara Boxer. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
