President Bush has learned he can no longer plausibly insist that concerns over climate change are unfounded or exaggerated. But he is perfectly willing to make sure that his administration will be remembered sourly decades hence for a willful do-nothing stance.
That U.S. leadership on reducing greenhouse gases will have to come from the next president, not this one, was amply demonstrated by the colossal bureaucratic punt the administration engineered Friday.
Instead of complying with a U.S. Supreme Court order to decide whether human health and welfare are being harmed by greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and other sources – or provide a good reason for not doing so – the administration just kicked the can down the road.
In a move forced by the White House, the Environmental Protection Agency said it will seek months of further public comment on the question.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said he had concluded that regulating greenhouse gases under the federal Clean Air Act was the “wrong way” to deal with climate change. Better to invest in “new technologies,” he insisted.
But that stance reverses the EPA’s own written recommendation in December – issued by Johnson – that greenhouse gases be regulated as a danger to human welfare. It runs counter to draft EPA reports this spring that concluded the Clean Air Act could be both workable and effective.
The administration’s effort to block the EPA recommendation was both transparent and shabby. Senior EPA officials described to the Washington Post a concerted White House push to censor official testimony and fudge scientific estimates and date.
For instance, the Post reported, the administration required the agency to base cost estimates for regulatory action on the assumption that oil will cost $58 a barrel in the future. Today’s price is north of $130 a barrel, and anyone who thinks oil will drop as low as $58 also believes in the tooth fairy.
The effect of such tinkering is to vastly reduce the estimated economic benefits to be gained from stricter emission standards by 2020 – from more than $2 trillion to less that $830 million.
Making a serious dent in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions will initially be a painful and disruptive process, but the case for beginning action now, rather than later, is compelling – as the EPA’s own scientists have concluded.
History will judge this president and this administration harshly for addressing climate change with little but disingenuous obstructionism and delay.
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