Partly sunny: why enviros can't admit that Bush's Clear Skies initiative isn't half bad

Washington Monthly, Dec, 2004 by David Whitman

The absence of a carbon dioxide cap soon set off an intractable stalemate in Congress. The Bush administration flatly refused to consider carbon caps, while Democrats and environmentalists were just as adamant that multi-pollutant legislation had to include carbon dioxide restrictions. But Bush's bow to the coal industry--and the fact that power generators agreed to back much of the Clear Skies bill after Bush abandoned his carbon dioxide campaign pledge--tainted every aspect of the bill as a shameless sop to industry.

To make matters worse, the administration made the politically foolhardy decision to release its toothless climate change policy at the same time as Clear Skies. (The climate change policy called for industry to voluntarily slow the growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions). The White House had gambled that the significant advance represented by the clean air proposal would help offset criticism of a lame global warming policy.

Instead, as so often happens, the resulting attacks on the climate-control policy tainted Clear Skies, convincing environmentalists that the administration was not serious about curbing industry emissions. The entrenched opposition of green groups was strategic in part--rather than acknowledge the benefits of Clear Skies, key environmental leaders chose to attack the administration's bill in hopes of securing a "concession" on carbon dioxide restrictions. Politicians, less-savvy advocates, and rank-and-file supporters followed suit, without much of an idea of what Clear Skies would and would not do.

By the spring of 2002, most green groups had given up trying to work with Bush. Instead, the eco-advocates were looking for evidence to expose the administration's campaign to protect polluters. They soon got it. Or at least it seemed that way.

Green monsters

Shortly after Bush unveiled Clear Skies, an internal EPA PowerPoint presentation from September 2001 surfaced that contained an incriminating slide. The slide suggested, by implication, that the Bush plan actually did allow more air pollution than the existing Clean Air Act. If true, Clear Skies was worse than inadequate--it was a dangerous, dishonest bill that the EPA itself knew would result in more deaths and pollution than the current law. All of the fears of environmentalists seemed confirmed. And they reacted with outrage.

A Who's Who of green groups denounced Clear Skies for weakening existing law in 2002 and 2003, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Lung Association, Environmental Defense, the Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the National Environmental Trust. Once it became green gospel that Clear Skies allowed more pollution than the Clean Air Act, politicians and advocates felt free to snicker at the Bush proposal. The president's "absurdly named 'Clear Skies Initiative,'" wrote National Resources Defense Council president John H. Adams, "would allow 50 percent more sulfur emissions and hundreds of thousands of additional tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides into our air." Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called Bush's plan the "Clear Lies Initiative."