BushCo smoking gun on CO2 revealed

We all knew the Environmental Protection Agency, below the level of Administrator Stephen Johnson, had good reason to support California’s car CO2 regulations and waiver request two years ago, and that the Bush White House stiffed it. Well, we now have the proof.

Bush EPA wants to smog up national parks

Squashing California’s attempt to regulate CO2 wasn’t enough. Signing off on “Clean Skies” wasn’t enough. Now, the Environmental Protection Agency and Administrator Stephen Johnson want to allow more air pollution in our national parks.

An EPA rules change would average daily air pollutions emissions in and around national parks over a full year, wiping out spikes in air pollution.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t visit national parks over a full year. I visit a specific park at a specific time.

A slew of National Park Service and EPA officials have challenged the rule change, arguing that it will worsen visibility in already-impaired areas, according to internal documents obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

And, it’s being done, the rule change, in a way that will allow more power plants to build near parks.

The National Parks Conservation Association has issued a report estimating the rule would ease the way for the construction of 28 new coal-fired power plants within 186 miles of 10 national parks. In each of the next 50 years, the report concludes, the new plants would emit a total of 122 million tons of carbon dioxide, 79,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 52,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 4,000 pounds of toxic mercury into the air over and around the Great Smoky Mountains, Zion and eight other national parks.

“It’s like if you're pulled over by a cop for going 75 miles per hour in a 55 miles-per-hour zone, and you say, 'If you look at how I've driven all year, I've averaged 55 miles per hour,’” said Mark Wenzler, director of the National Parks Conservation Association’s clean-air programs. “It allows you to vastly underestimate the impact of these emissions.”

Don Shepherd, an environmental engineer at the Park Service's air resources division in Denver, said of the new rule, “I don’t know of anyone at our level, who deals with this day to day, that likes it or thinks it's going to make sense.

“We really want to have clean air at national parks all the time, and not just at average times,” Shepherd said in a telephone interview. “All of our national parks have impaired visibility. . . . It would really be a setback in trying to make progress.”

You know what to do, after reading the rest of the report.

Go to my links list on the right, click on “Earthjustice,” and find out how to donate. Because the National Park Service deserves a good lawyer.

And, as a violation of the NPS’s Organic Act, this is definitely actionable.

Ozone not a pollutant either?

President Bush personally intervened to keep the Environmental Protection Agency, which had planned on tightening its ozone standards far below 80 ppm, from going any tighter than 75 ppm. Question is, can he even legally do that?

EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA’s scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.

“It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA’s expert scientific judgment,” said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The lawsuits are coming, and Earthjustice, assuming it’s the legal counsel, will get a check from me. And, they’ve got one good, if hostile witness already available:

Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard. …

Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in the Clean Air Act, said Dudley's letter to the EPA represents “a misunderstanding of the statute, a misunderstanding of Supreme Court precedent and a misunderstanding of the science as the expert agency understands it.”

Bring on the lawsuits; I’m ready. And, let’s name people like Stephen Johnson, and even the president himself, as personal defendants, too. They’ll be out of office and ready to be sued by then.

Update: For more on what a sneaky “therefore” can show, read this NRDC blog post.

Four times, the EPA fought the White House on lessening new ozone standards. When it lost for the last time, the “therefore” was somebody’s way of making clear who made the call.