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

Washington Monthly, Dec, 2004 by David Whitman

If there were lingering doubts about the thin green line, they vanished in April 2003 after the EPA released its proposed rule to cut harmful emissions from off-road diesel vehicles (e.g., tractors, bulldozers, backhoes, etc.), a change that would reduce fine particle pollution by curtailing diesel soot and nitrogen oxide emissions. This rule may be the only Bush administration clean-air measure that environmentalists have consistently praised. Many environmentalists had long sought aggressive regulation of off-road diesel engines; finally, here was a Bush initiative that green activists could support.

The moment of consensus ended abruptly, however, when the Natural Resources Defense Council made a public relations faux pas, issuing a press release that was too complimentary, calling the proposal, "the biggest public health step since lead was removed from gasoline more than two decades ago." Green groups pounced. In his "In the Loop" column, The Washington Post's Al Kamen reported that "other enviro groups were apoplectic, saying that the compromise [EPA] proposal was a perfectly fine and important initiative, but the NRDC's effusive praise would cripple environmentalists' efforts to criticize the administration's overall, far-from-perfect record." NRDC soon removed the offending press release from its Web site, and in June of that year, the organization sent EPA administrator Whitman a "corrected"--and less effusive--statement of support for the off-road proposal.

Bush, enviro

It could be argued that the Bush administration's record in reducing soot and smog pollution is surprisingly strong. Though the administration came to power with a reputation as environmental despoilers, it went to the Supreme Court to defend Clinton's 1997 air quality standards against industry challenges. It maintained all of the Clinton administration regulations to reduce diesel soot and nitrogen oxide emissions, and continued prosecuting the controversial Clinton-era new source review cases against power companies (although it did subsequently bring new enforcement actions and investigations to a virtual halt). It issued its own groundbreaking rule to reduce harmful emissions from off-road vehicles. And it proposed legislation to cut power plant pollution by nearly 70 percent.

Nevertheless, by December 2003, the administration realized that Clear Skies wasn't going to make it through Congress and dropped the proposal in favor of a fallback option, the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). Swapping a legislative effort for the regulatory route allowed Bush to avoid Congress and strip out provisions that environmentalists objected to on new source review and mercury standards. CAIR, however, is significantly more vulnerable in court challenges than Clear Skies would have been (it is easier to bring a challenge to regulations than to enacted law) and will undoubtedly be held up, not unlike the Clinton administration's 1997 air quality standards.

By all rights, green groups should have gotten behind CAIR. It established a cap-and-trade system to reduce interstate air pollution in 29 Eastern states and D.C. and set emissions caps similar to Clear Skies, requiring states to cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by about 70 percent in the next 10 years. By 2015, the CAIR rule will prevent 13,000 early deaths and save $80 billion each year. With the exception of the 1997 air quality standards, the new EPA proposal is projected to save more lives than any air pollution regulation issued by the Clinton administration.