The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.
Gasp! Shades of Bush, suppressing science at the EPA for political reasons! Are they all the same???
Don't worry, citizens! Senator James Inhofe is there, and demands an investigation!
"It's clear that the data EPA used were outdated and inconsistent, as the report's authors have revealed," Senator Inhofe said. "Making scientific decisions while ignoring key data politicizes the scientific process and shows that important policy decisions are being made in a black box. The Agency's actions fail to meet the Administrator's commitment to transparency and openness."
"The Agency's commitment to transparency must be more than just words. The EPA cannot put a gag order on sound science," Barrasso said. "Folks' livelihoods are on the line."
...the emails reveal little more than a rather tedious employee-management dispute. Carlin's boss, Al McGartland, tells Carlin that his report won't be included in the EPA's official findings and asks him to get back to work on other issues. EPA Press Secretary Adora Andy noted that Carlin's education and work expertise are largely in economics, not climatology. That's why his comments on climate science were not included.
Apparently the economist was given lots of opportunity to voice his opinion and sit in on various committees that dealt with climate change. So why was his opinion suppressed? Because of politics?
If you read the story of how the emails came about in the first place - an economist, with climate change science as his "hobby" submitted an unsolicited opinion that took four days to research and write, and cited, among others, an astrologer - and you realize who"leaked" the emails to the media, the whole story looks ridiculous. CBS News should skulk offstage, shame faced.
Unbelievable. I'll never understand how someone could actually work for an organization like CEI. Maybe they belong the race of shape-shifting lizard men from outer space, or something, because I don't understand how you do work like this, manipulate the media with what are clear lies, when so much is at stake...
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to act for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.
The decision, which most likely would play out in stages over a period of months, would have a profound impact on transportation, manufacturing costs and how utilities generate power. It could accelerate the progress of energy and climate change legislation in Congress and form a basis for the United States' negotiating position at United Nations climate talks set for December in Copenhagen.
This element of Obama's impending energy policy hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves. If he does it right, it could be the secret weapon that kills new coal plants for good -- with far greater certainty than a middling cap-and-trade program. Obama has always said, to those who were listening closely, that he plans to prevent the construction of a new fleet of dirty coal plants, if not by carbon pricing then by other means. EPA regs are the other means. Beyond that, and perhaps even more importantly, EPA regs could hasten the demise of existing coal plants.
Now. Anybody want to bet Montana's future on coal? Time to start thinking up new strategies for bringing in state revenue for schools, folks.
I've been meaning to write something up on the politics surrounding Libby, Montana, and its asbestos problem. Well, "problem" is too mild a term. Crisis? Disaster? What word evokes the horror of the industrial "accident" that is slowly killing the town?
But there's too much. It's one of those topics that a blog post can't even begin to touch. Read "An Air that Kills," by Andrew Schneider and David McCumber, an account written by the Seattle P-I journalist who broke the story.
What you do need to know, is that the one politician who's been in Libby's corner is Max Baucus. You can say whatever you want about his history in the Senate and his politics, but you can't deny this: Max has battled for Libby against WR Grace and the upper administrative echelons of the EPA. That's why you saw uncharacteristic anger from our senior Senator at a recent hearing on asbestos contamination in Libby, when he forbid two EPA officials from testifying.
What's made clear in "An Air that Kills" is that mining officials in Libby knew that its vermiculite was killing miners and townspeople -- and probably customers, too. And what's worse is that EPA officials knew, too, but helped block any regulation or investigation that would have exposed the problem. And in the book, the authors speculated whether the Bush administration had a hand in the most recent EPA stonewalling.
(I should hasten to add that the site workers and response teams from the EPA were not at all culpable, but took extraordinary actions to try to remediate the asbestos in Libby, all the while fighting the agency's upper levels of bureaucracy. That is, the boots-on-the-ground wanted to do what was right, but were constantly butting heads with the political apointees.)
U.S. Sen. Max Baucus has accused White House and Environmental Protection Agency officials of orchestrating a "conspiracy" by squashing a decision to declare a public health emergency in Libby three years after it was revealed more than 200 people died and another 2,000 fell ill because of asbestos exposure.
On Sept. 25 the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) held a hearing to discuss a report released the previous day by Baucus, D-Mont., that describes a scenario in which top-level officials from the national Office of Management and Budget prevented the EPA from declaring Libby a public health emergency. Such a declaration would have authorized the EPA to do extensive clean-up work along with providing Libby residents increased health screening, basic services like oxygen - which many people need because of asbestos-related complications - and long-term medical health care.
At the hearing, the EPA's Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Stephen Nesbitt suggested that federal officials persuaded the EPA to cancel its plans to declare a public health emergency in fear that such a declaration would start a sweeping and costly national effort to clean up asbestos.
Asbestos is a nation-wide problem. It kills millions of Americans. It's responsible for billions in health-care costs. (And why doesn't anyone mention the financial burden that industrial pollution puts on our health-care system?) We should start a sweeping and costly national effort to clean up asbestos. It's in our best long-term health and economic interest. And those companies that knowingly released a product that's harmful to human health should be obligated to help pay for that effort.
But also Baucus' investigation should remind us how pervasive and pernicious the Bush administration's influence into every aspect of our government continues to be. Don't be fooled by all the attention being paid to Obama and McCain: the Bush administration is still alive and well. More will no doubt come out after Obama occupies the White House, and ridding the federal government of its incompetent and partisan operatives is going to be a years-long problem.
Senior Climate Negotiator and Special Representative Head of the U.S. Delegation (and Bush lackey) to a 2003 UN climate conference in Milan , Italy , Dr. Harlan L. Watson:
...I would like to highlight the efforts being made by State and local governments in the United States to address climate change. Geographically, the United States encompasses vast and diverse climatic zones representative of all major regions of the world -- polar, temperate, semi-tropical, and tropical -- with different heating, cooling, and transportation needs and with different energy endowments. Such diversity allows our State and local governments to act as laboratories where new and creative ideas and methods can be applied and shared with others and inform federal policy -- a truly bottom-up approach to addressing global climate change.
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California's attempt to impose tough emission limits on car manufacturers, according to insiders at the government Environmental Protection Agency.
Staff at the agency, which announced last week that California's proposed limits were redundant, said the agency's chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.
Bush and his allies in Congress have steadfastly rejected the "new and creative ideas and methods" implemented at the state level. They fought efforts to get a mandatory nationwide GHG inventory in the energy bill; they still have no comprehensive plan to address climate change; they moved heaven and earth to keep a Renewable Portfolio Standard out of the energy bill; and they have set no goals for reducing emissions.
Today, as the coup de grace, the Bush EPA denied California -- our greatest national "laboratory" for climate policy -- the right to implement its own emission reduction policy. In doing so, EPA chief Stephen Johnson explicitly rejected diversity, calling the move from one fuel economy standard to two a "confusing patchwork" that would befuddle the poor automakers.
When it was a good excuse for the lack of federal action, the Bush administration lauded state initiative. But when it actually threatened one of their corporate contributors, they shut it down. Such is the Republican commitment to federalism.
