In rejecting California's greenhouse gas regulation request, did the Bush EPA ignore both law and science?

Question

"California met every criteria ... on the merits. The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years on all the other waivers," one EPA staff member told the Times. "We told him (Johnson) that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts."

"The Times quoted unidentified EPA staff as revealing that an internal briefing document had advised Johnson that even if he rejected California's request, the state would be likely to mount a successful legal challenge."

"The Times reported that EPA staff believed Johnson made his decision after meetings between auto industry executives and Vice President Dick Cheney, and after a Chrysler executive sent a letter to the White House arguing why neither California nor the EPA should be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.

"It's a totally different thing. The argument that somehow because we now have a CAFE standard that means we shouldn't be regulating greenhouse gases, it just doesn't hold water, it makes no sense"

What do you think?

http://green.yahoo.com/news/afp/20071221/ts_alt_afp/usenvironmentclimatecaliforniaauto.html

Answer 1

Members of that same committee that Jim "400 skeptics" Inhofe is on think so:

"I am particularly concerned about reports indicating that you overrode the recommendations of your technical and legal staff in making this decision."
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=fa5c9906-802a-23ad-45e7-679922e52165

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=f4efdef8-802a-23ad-42fc-a6f1815362e4
"With Members of Congress leaving town, and with the news on global warming getting worse with each passing day, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has delivered the worst possible news to the good people of California and the 12 other states who have proven they are leaders in fighting for the survival of the planet.

It is ironic that this waiver denial comes during the season when we are supposed to work to make our country and the world a better place. And to hide behind the newly-passed Energy Bill as an excuse flies in the face of the Supreme Court's findings and the Energy Bill itself.

This ill-advised denial turns its back on science, turns its back on fairness, turns its back on states' rights, and turns its back on precedent. "

Hopefully we'll know more about the source of the alleged management override of EPA scientists if the EPA cooperates with this request for information on relevent communications with White House staff:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=fa5c9906-802a-23ad-45e7-679922e52165

"On its face, this decision appears to be contrary to the Clean Air Act and the science. Pursuant to its oversight responsibilities, the Environment and Public Works Committee is initiating a comprehensive review of this decision. Please provide the following:

1. All records that you or any other person in the Office of the Administrator received or reviewed that mention or are otherwise related to this waiver request, including any records presenting options, recommendations, “pros and cons,” legal issues or risks, political implications or considerations, or any other record. Please provide these records by January 7, 2008.
2. All records reflecting communications that you, or any person in the Office of the Administrator, or any person in the Office of the Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, had with any person in the White House (including but not limited to Office of the Vice President, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Management and Budget, or any other person in the Executive Office of the President) regarding or relating to this waiver request. Please provide these documents by January 7, 2008."

Answer 2

We all should have known things like this would come from an administration that was not elected, but was placed in office by a partisan Supreme Court. Election fraud and disenfranchisement of voters has been the pattern for 7 years now.

Diebold, the voting machine company that built the hackable/changeable voting system, and promised to deliver the elections to Shrub and the repugs that has allowed the dieing conservative movement to survive 7 more years is now bankrupt. (Thank you Great Spirit) Many states are de-certifying the electronic voting systems of the Bush era...

So for an administration that went into office against the law, and broke the law on an almost daily basis as they made it up as they went along, should not surprise anyone that science for them is just an inconvenient truth...

Dick and Dubya should be frog marched out of the White House and procecuted for treason and war crimes.

But we all know that will never happen as long as we continue to allow corporations to have personhood and pull the strings of our puppet government with cash and the revolving doors that create corruption and deliver us politicians that do not represent the majority of the population.

The media must be forced to once again allow equal time for political discovery before elections, at no cost to the canidates running. This would take away the need for huge amounts of money to get elected.

When we once again can have citizen politicans, the progressive movement will flourish. Then we can begin the proccess to salvage the brainwashed, poorly educated portion of our society that would otherwise be an obstruction to building the better future many of us that visit here can already visualize.

Answer 3

Ron C - The conservative Supreme Court, in April of 2007, ruled that CO2 is a regulated pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

As far as the waiver request, the circuit and district courts in the California region will likely vote on the side of the state. Nobody knows how the Supreme Court will vote on this. It's encouraging that all other similar waiver requests have been accepted by the EPA up to this point. It just makes it unlikely that Bush will prevail on this issue.

Answer 4

I think the fact that Bush and Cheney have served not one but TWO terms is an affront to law, science AND common sense.

You elected a bloody chimp that can't even speak the language ... TWICE!!!

But then he wasn't elected anyway, he was installed as President by the Electoral College, not by the popular vote. So much for democracy. Combine Fascism and Republicans and democracy goes right out the window.

Answer 5

My opinion...

Law - no; Although the EPA grants a state the right to have stricter standards, they must have a part in the approval of those standards.

Science - yes; Almost anytime the Bush administration gets involved in science, the facts are ignored.

Answer 6

It's a delaying tactic. The EPA's own lawyers said they were likely to lose the ensuing lawsuit, a view shared by many outside lawyers.

"a slide presentation by agency lawyers had said that if the EPA granted the waiver and California sued, the "EPA [is] likely to lose suit."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1221/p01s0...

Bush's position on global warming was that it wasn't real. When the scientific evidence became overwhelming, his position changed to, it's real but I'll delay any action until I leave office. Everything he's done is consistent with that.

RON C - CO2 is certainly a pollutant. "Pollutant" is a legal term, not a technical one. The Supreme Court has ruled that CO2 is a pollutant. Since it's a legal issue, they win.

The technical basis is that something is a pollutant if there's too much of it. There's way too much CO2. That was proven in the Supreme Court. Bush's decision on California (it surely wasn't EPA's) directly contradicts what the Court said, and it's doomed. It IS against the law.

But he bought some time to leave office. Probably not enough, though.

Answer 7

I can only conclude that the head of the EPA is a traitor to all the principles and spirit of the organization for what it was supposed to stand for and that is to protect the environment. It seems so blatantly obvious that he is speaking for the automobile industries/oil corporations and his post was for their benefits and not for the interests of the general public. Its like appointing a police chief who advocates organised crime or who is on their payroll.

Answer 8

CO2 is not a pollutant. It occurs in our atmosphere naturally and is essential for life. It is part of the carbon cycle.

The effort to regulate atmospheric CO2 is based purely on the theory of global warming, which seems to have been disproved in 2007. A great deal of peer-reviewed research was published this year showing that global warming will not be catastrophic. The most important of these papers is probably the one on climate sensitivity by Steven Schwartz of the Brookhaven National Lab. You can read it here:

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

The second most influential paper is probably the one by Petr Chylek from Los Alamitos National Lab showing that scientists had previously overestimated the cooling impact of aeorsols on the climate. Climatologists had appealed to this impact as the explanation for why temps dropped from 1945 to 1975 (triggering the fear of a coming Ice Age) even though atmospheric CO2 was rising. If the impact of aerosols were overestimated, then climate sensitivity to CO2 has also been overestimated.

You can read an abstract of Chylek's paper here:
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/SFgate/SFgate?&listenv=table&multiple=1&range=1&directget=1&application=fm07&database=%2Fdata%2Fepubs%2Fwais%2Findexes%2Ffm07%2Ffm07&maxhits=200&="A21H-04"

To answer your question, no laws were broken. It appears the Bush Administration is following the science.

Answer 9

I think it's great. I like less regulation. I think they decided that it would be better for the auto manufacturers to concentrate on new technology to solve the problem faster, rather than have to comply with regulations set by the individual states. Don't get me wrong, I am for states rights. It's just that this time I think they felt it would be best to concentrate on the whole nation going "green" instead of just California. Californians can still go out and buy hybrids if they want to.

Answer 10

No. The "science" is flawed. We've got the right people in charge at the White House.

Could you imagine if Gore were in there? He'd wreck our economy for the sake of a bunch of loony tunes enviro-nuts.

The California budget crises are a direct result of liberal policy. It's best not to follow California's "lead".