Bush Admin. Score Victory in it's War on the Environment

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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Breath in deep, your in Bush county.

…
Bush administration revises air pollution rules

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration on Wednesday exempted thousands of older power plants, refineries and factories from having to install costly clean air controls when they modernize with new equipment that improves efficiency but increases pollution.

In a major new revision to its air pollution rules, the Environmental Protection Agency will allow up to 20 percent of the costs of replacing each plant’s production system to be considered “routine maintenance” that doesn’t require costly antipollution controls, according to agency documents obtained by The Associated Press

“We can say categorically that pollution will not increase as a result of this rule,” said Jeff Holmstead, EPA’s assistant administrator in charge of air quality.

Environmentalists said that was untrue, however, since emissions can increase within a plant’s permitted limits, and most plants are not now operating near those limits. They described the new changes as disastrous for people’s health, especially those living near or downwind of some 17,000 industrial plants affected. And they said EPA ignored concerns expressed by hundreds of thousands of Americans opposed to the new regulations.

“It’s an accounting gimmick that eliminates any possibility of pollution controls,” said John Walke, director of Natural Resources Defense Council’s clean air program. “It’s a total disaster. It’s the effective repeal of this clean air program, through illegal administrative means.”

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/08/27/clean.air.ap/index.html

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The government is looking after the interests of only "big business", because the latter keep the economy running. If the profitability of the businesses decreases, there will be further layoffs etc., which any government wants to avoid.

But, is it really the right attitude in the long term? Eventually, when we have polluted the air so much that it becomes unbreathable, will our jobs be able to keep us alive?

An very perceptive Red-Indian saying sums it very nicely:

[QUOTE]
"Only after the last tree has been cut down;
only after the last fish has been caught;
only after the last river has been poisoned;
only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten."
[/QUOTE]

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Rohit: *
If the profitability of the businesses decreases, there will be further layoffs etc., which any government wants to avoid

[/QUOTE]

yeah that's what the Republicans want you to think..their 'trickle down' theory or 'voodoo economics'.. when have we seen jobless rates lowered due to increased profitability of businesses?? when the airlines were bailed out did they not lay off personnel?? did they not raise bonuses for CEO's??

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by PakistaniAbroad: *
yeah that's what the Republicans want you to think..their 'trickle down' theory or 'voodoo economics'.. when have we seen jobless rates lowered due to increased profitability of businesses?? when the airlines were bailed out did they not lay off personnel?? did they not raise bonuses for CEO's??
[/QUOTE]

I think you have a point, i.e., the Republicans' theory is wrong. They too probably know it; the reasons for their policies seem to be something else.

But, even if we assume that these theories do work (i.e. profitability leads to more jobs), trying to be profitable at the expense of the environment is not a wise thing to do.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by PakistaniAbroad: *
when have we seen jobless rates lowered due to increased profitability of businesses??
[/QUOTE]

Most recently from about 1982 through 2000.

Jobless rates do not go down when businesses are unprofitable.

You are confusing profitability with some other concept.

The airline bailout did not make airlines profitable. The airline bailout merely decreased the total amount of their losses.

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^ mv all i know is that News like this sound totally contradictory to the theories and assumptions put forth to justify the ‘trickle down economy’.

*Delta Air Lines Inc. and Continental Airlines Inc. gave their CEOs raises after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as they fired a total of 33,000 workers, according to a study by two nonprofit groups. *

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Hey, stories like that p*ss me off too. My tax dollars go to bail out airlines from huge losses and CEOs for certain airlines get some of those dollars for raises. But that’s really unrelated to issues like whether jobless rates go down when corporations are profitable [theydo] and/or whether trickle down economics works [debatable].

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well aren't 'tax cuts for the rich' or 'trickle down economy' based on the same assumption that if corporations were to be given more of their money back they'd in turn benefit their workers or hire more.

We've seen one such contradiction in that news story above .. how can we trust these people on other important issues like keeping the environment clean.. all they'd do is lobby hard to keep these issues on the back burner or hire public relation firms to even deny the existence of any harmful effects their actions are causing.

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Keep my thread clean. It's about Bush's war on the environment, not his failed economic plan(s).

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In case people were in need of clarification on where the admin stands on such issues..

Feds Urge Overturn of Calif. Air Law](Yahoo News: Latest and Breaking News, Headlines, Live Updates, and More)

The federal government is backing a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to overturn a California clean-air agency’s attempt to curb pollution from buses, taxis, trash trucks and other fleet vehicles.

In a filing late Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice urged the court to overturn the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s clean fleet rules for the greater Los Angeles metropolitan region. The laws, adopted in 2000 and 2001, require operators to buy cleaner-burning models when they replace or add vehicles to their fleets.

The laws have resulted in the replacement of hundreds of diesel trucks, buses and other vehicles with models that burn natural gas and other alternative fuels, according to the AQMD, which is charged with cleaning up the air in much of Southern California.

Two industry groups, the Western States Petroleum Association and the Engine Manufacturers Association, sued the AQMD in U.S. District Court. The clean-air agency prevailed in that court and in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The plaintiffs then appealed to the Supreme Court, which is expected to hear the case in December.

The Department of Justice’s friend-of-the-court brief argues that under the federal Clean Air Act, states and local jurisdictions cannot establish their own emission standards for new vehicles without getting permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A message seeking comment from the Department of Justice was not immediately returned Saturday.

The AQMD maintains the rules do not set emissions standards. Instead, the rules ask fleet owners to choose from among the cleanest engine technologies available, and allow exceptions if no alternatives can be located, agency executive officer Barry Wallerstein said.

The Engine Manufacturers Association has argued that the rules constitute a de facto ban on certain engines and vehicles.

The brief marked the third time in a month the federal government has weighed in on issues that affect Southern California’s fight against the nation’s worst smog.

Previously, the EPA refused to commit to any emission reduction measures that the AQMD sought for the region. The AQMD requested the action in the latest update to its plan to clean up Southern California’s air by 2010.

And on Wednesday, the EPA unveiled revisions to the 40-year-old Clean Air Act that will allow power plants and factories to upgrade without adopting the most up-to-date pollution control equipment.

Several states, including California, are expected to go to court to block the revisions.

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the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats– One of the more overlooked achievements of the Bush Administration, its destruction of the environment.

Crimes Against Nature Alternet 25 Nov 03

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Natural Resources Defense Council
November 25, 2003

George W. Bush will go down in history as America’s worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America’s environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country’s air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation’s most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucrats.

**The Bush attack was not entirely unexpected. George W. Bush had the grimmest environmental record of any governor during his tenure in Texas. Texas became number one in air and water pollution and in the release of toxic chemicals. In his six years in Austin, he championed a short-term pollution-based prosperity, which enriched his political contributors and corporate cronies by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Now President Bush is set to do the same to America. After three years, his policies are already bearing fruit, diminishing standards of living for millions of Americans.

I am angry both as a citizen and a father. Three of my sons have asthma, and I watch them struggle to breathe on bad-air days. And they’re comparatively lucky: One in four African-American children in New York shares this affliction; their suffering is often unrelieved because they lack the insurance and high-quality health care that keep my sons alive. My kids are among the millions of Americans who cannot enjoy the seminal American experience of fishing locally with their dad and eating their catch. Most freshwater fish in New York and all in Connecticut are now under consumption advisories. A main source of mercury pollution in America, as well as asthma-provoking ozone and particulates, is the coal-burning power plants that President Bush recently excused from complying with the Clean Air Act.

Furthermore, the deadly addiction to fossil fuels that White House policies encourage has squandered our treasury, entangled us in foreign wars, diminished our international prestige, made us a target for terrorist attacks and increased our reliance on petty Middle Eastern dictators who despise democracy and are hated by their own people. When the Republican right managed to install George W. Bush as president in 2000, movement leaders once again set about doing what they had attempted to do since the Reagan years: eviscerate the infrastructure of laws and regulations that protect the environment. For twenty-five years it has been like the zombie that keeps coming back from the grave.

The attacks began on Inauguration Day, when President Bush’s chief of staff and former General Motors lobbyist Andrew Card quietly initiated a moratorium on all recently adopted regulations. Since then, the White House has enlisted every federal agency that oversees environmental programs in a coordinated effort to relax rules aimed at the oil, coal, logging, mining and chemical industries as well as automakers, real estate developers, corporate agribusiness and other industries.

**Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency has halted work on sixty-two environmental standards, the federal Department of Agriculture has stopped work on fifty-seven standards, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has halted twenty-one new standards. The EPA completed just two major rules – both under court order and both watered down at industry request – compared to twenty-three completed by the Clinton administration and fourteen by the Bush Sr. administration in their first two years. ** …

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Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it’s War on the Environment

Another setback for President Bush and his policy makers!

Court Suspends Bush Pollution Rules](http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=4042862) Reuters 24 Dec 03

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - **A federal court on Wednesday halted a Bush administration plan to allow power plants, oil refineries and other industrial facilities to make upgrades to aging plants without installing costly new air pollution control equipment. A coalition of environmental groups and states sued to stop the new rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, saying the policy changes violated the federal Clean Air Act and would result in more emissions being spewed into the air. **

Emissions from coal-fired power plants and refineries can aggravate asthma, chronic bronchitis and pneumonia. The U.S. appeals court in Washington, agreed to temporarily set aside the changes to the EPA’s “new source review” rules and said they could not take effect until the lawsuit challenging their legality was finished. EPA officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the ruling. The Bush administration has been criticized by Democrats and green groups for relaxing several environmental protection rules at the behest of energy companies. The industry contends the changes simply reflect the administration’s analysis of scientific evidence and costs. …

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Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it’s War on the Environment

on Par for the Republican White House.

…
EPA Pushed to Lower Reporting Standards
GAO Report Criticizes EPA Changes in Toxic Chemical Reporting by Industry

The White House pressured the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken requirements that companies annually disclose releases of toxic chemicals, congressional auditors say.

In a study scheduled to be released next week, the Government Accountability Office says the changes mean that industry will have to file 22,000 fewer reports each year, reducing an important public monitoring tool on industrial emissions.
The EPA rushed to complete the changes because of “pressure” from the White House Office of Management and Budget to reduce the regulatory burdens on industry, says the report obtained by The Associated Press. The White House overstated the cost-savings to industry of making the changes, it added.

“The EPA administrator expedited the process in order to meet a commitment to OMB,” which had pushed to reduce the paperwork burden on industry by the end of 2006, said the GAO.

For more than two decades, industries and businesses have had to disclose to the EPA the amount of toxic chemicals they produce, store and discharge into the air, water and ground. Communities, watchdog groups, local neighborhoods and even the Internal Revenue Service have used the information

Last December, the EPA reduced the amount of information that needed to be disclosed in the Toxic Release Inventory Report, or TRI, process. Companies were allowed to use shorter, less detailed forms if they used less than 5,000 pounds of toxic chemicals or released less than 2,000 pounds. Previously more detailed information had to be provided in longer forms if there was as little as 500 pounds, a threshold that the new rule maintains only for some of the most dangerous chemicals.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=3990852

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Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it's War on the Environment

[QUOTE]
The White House pressured the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken requirements that companies annually disclose releases of toxic chemicals, congressional auditors say.

[/QUOTE]

So the average American Is happy on such reports. It's mere regression nothing else. It seems like the Cowboy has learnt nothing out of recent climate change impacts.

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Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it’s War on the Environment

After some harsh words and lots of “boos” from the other countries, the US delegation turns 180 degrees. Funny, lets hope we will not see another turn by USA sooner or later on global warming pacts.

Timepass
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Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it's War on the Environment

At least we should be "happy" [or not???] that at least they admit on something. Back in the day, Bush and Co. laughed off that global warming was a conspiracy of sorts. I remember reading an article by FAS who said ROFLing that even a dumb person knows that Global Warming has already started!

SO much for Yale education!

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Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it's War on the Environment

^Some sources say, PNG delegations lambast USA made this possible. But I don't trust US delegation on this issue as long as I don't see the promises made inscribed black on white.

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Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it's War on the Environment

I think the treaty makers etc. are now waiting for the next administration to take over in the US..

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Re: Bush Admin. Score Victory in it's War on the Environment

I agree it would be foolish to trust these commitments by Bush controlled departments as the credability of the Bush admin. as we all know has been exposed. Any commitment, agreement, or proposal by them on any matter should be closely examined and only be taken with a grain of salt, they are not to be trusted. While the structure of the government makes them more transparent and trustworthy than the likes of Russia and China their words are still thin.