A Revived EPA Takes on Climate Change and More
Under President Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency is starting to flex its muscles again
Certainly, the EPA is in line to get more money. Obama's 2010 budget proposes increasing the agency's funding by more than 33 percent, to $10.5 billion. (In addition, the EPA is helping distribute $7. 2 billion in stimulus funding, much of which is going to state and local governments.)
But there is still a large degree of uncertainty over what the EPA's role will be amid all the other players jostling for attention, particularly Carol Browner, Obama's high-powered White House climate change czar, not to mention the reigning Democratic environmental and energy leaders on Capitol Hill, Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Barbara Boxer.
A big debate is already kicking up over what will happen once the EPA does formally label CO2 a threat. For one thing, the Clean Air Act will most likely require the agency to regulate CO2 emissions from a whole host of sources, including power plants, factories, and farms (although there is still significant debate on this point). This week, Waxman, who chairs the House Energy Committee, released a highly anticipated draft of a cap-and-trade bill to limit emissions, suggesting that lawmakers may be getting ahead of the EPA. That may be exactly what Obama aides want. "My view is what they're really trying to do is keep the pressure up on Congress to do something more sensible on greenhouse gas emissions as opposed to letting EPA figure out something," says Holmstead. "It seems to me it is a very calculated move—and that's not meant to be criticism. They are taking slow steps." Had the EPA wanted to move more quickly to regulate CO2, for example, there were more aggressive strategies it could have pursued.
Meanwhile, Jackson will have some opportunities to prove how serious she is about restoring scientific rigor to the EPA's decision making after the Bush years. The EPA, for instance, is trying to figure out how to interpret the science on contentious ethanol-related issues, including whether to allow cars to run on higher blends of ethanol and how to measure emissions associated with biofuel production.
Weighing in are lobbying groups, businesses, manufacturers, powerful farm-state senators, and the heads of other cabinet departments. It will be an early test of Jackson's leadership and her ability to stand up to competing voices within the Obama administration. "I still believe that one of the biggest challenges is this idea of czars, of having policy people in the White House," says Whitman. "It creates confusion in the agency about who you would go to." But, Whitman adds, "I will tell you that Lisa is plenty tough. If anyone can deal with it, she can." It also doesn't hurt that she will probably have the biggest budget in the EPA's 39-year history.
Reader Comments
Need to get rid of the EPA as it now stands
The following is from Micheal Crichton's Speech on "Enviromentalism as Religion" fond at:
>http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html<
How will we manage to get environmentalism out of the clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline? There's a simple answer: we must institute far more stringent requirements for what constitutes knowledge in the environmental realm. I am thoroughly sick of politicized so-called facts that simply aren't true. It isn't that these "facts" are exaggerations of an underlying truth. Nor is it that certain organizations are spinning their case to present it in the strongest way. Not at all---what more and more groups are doing is putting out is lies, pure and simple. Falsehoods that they know to be false.
This trend began with the DDT campaign, and it persists to this day. At this moment, the EPA is hopelessly politicized. In the wake of Carol Browner, it is probably better to shut it down and start over. What we need is a new organization much closer to the FDA. We need an organization that will be ruthless about acquiring verifiable results, that will fund identical research projects to more than one group, and that will make everybody in this field get honest fast.
Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better. That's not a good future for the human race. That's our past. So it's time to abandon the religion of environmentalism, and return to the science of environmentalism, and base our public policy decisions firmly on that.
EPA "Splashy Announcements"
Once again, Gullible Warming (GW) is being stoked by huge amounts of tax-payer money being thrown into the fire. The Siberian tundra has, for millions of years, absorbed and frozen the wastes of countless millions of animals, many of which are now extinct. As it thaws, the waste products will be unfrozen and bio-degraded. The result will be countless tons of methane pouring into the atmosphere. There is nothing that the Eco-Wackos (EWs) or I can do to stop this.Human input is miniscule compared to the methane thatthis huge amount of frozen waste will generate.
Climate and CO2 and EPA
I have done a fair amount of reading on this. It is accuate to say that the climate is getting warmer. It is also accurate to say that CO2 from man is a likely contributor. The key word is "likely." It is not at all certain we can have much impact by changing our ways. However conservation is a good principle. If we can do with less carbon for a similar cost we should based on the possiblity it might help. The EPA does not have a clear path on this.
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