Bush Gets EPA To Weaken Ozone Rules
If you talk to people concerned with the environment or visit the sites, they’ll tell you that President George Bush has one of the worst environmental records of any President in modern times — proactively so. The latest example is quite telling:
The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA.
EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA’s scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.
“It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA’s expert scientific judgment,” said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
According to the Washington Post, this sent sent administration officials scrambling to make sure their paperwork matched the President’s action:
The president’s order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone.
Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA’s past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard.
So the action contradicted the administration’s own submissions. Bush’s record is ironic because about a century ago there was a Republican President who was passionate about the environment.
6 Responses to “Bush Gets EPA To Weaken Ozone Rules”
Four more years! Four more years!
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Dear Mr. President,
Most Americans already believe you are one of the worst presidents this great country has ever had. You don't have to swing for the fences and prove you are the single worst.
Thank you.
Joe, you're right about Teddy Roosevelt, he was truly concerned about the environment and saving our wide-open spaces. But I'd also point out that the EPA itself was established by President Nixon. It wasn't really so long ago that environmental protection meant something to members of BOTH political parties.
It's just too bad that somewhere along the way, the Republican party started to identify environmental protection as something only a Democrat should love.
You are correct, J Wiedner –Republicans should hang their heads for putting industrial interests ahead of protecting our natural resources.Unless its oil, they don't seem to care much That's a major reason that I won't vote for them anymore.
I guess they don't want to kill the fatted calf that they all feed off of.
On a local note from Michigan, Milliken(Republican governor) created the Michigan version of the EPA and also worried about public land use for all, not just corporations. Some evangelicals are also going green. But Milliken was a liberal pro-environment and pro-buisiness, without selling off natural resources to cronies.
The problem seems to be mostly with congressional Republicans and the president of course. Noone can deny that Schwartzenegger has led the way in the fight against the EPA in California and as Rudi noted there are others. Governors may not be under the kind of pressure to raise money from industry lobbyists the way the national pols are.
Arnold does a great job on the environment- but Bush and cronies hamper some of his efforts- i.e. the tightening of the auto emissions.
Also, the EPA isn't just about protecting our natural resources, it's about preserving our health. I think the cost to society is much higher if we live in smog-choked cities and visiting hospitals every other day due to respiratory ailments, than the costs to our economy that Bush loves to complains about (when what he means is that if environmental controls are enacted then his friends don't earn as much money in business).