Choking on 'Clear Skies': Orwellian initiative would freshen license for nation's foulest polluters
workingforchange.com
AUSTIN, Texas -- The administration is now in Full
Ostrich on Iraq: Dick Cheney put on a fabulous
performance last Sunday on "Meet the Press," in
which he insisted everything in Iraq is trickety-boo,
right as rain and cheery bye. I haven't heard
anyone lie with such gravitas since Henry Kissinger
was in office.
But for the complete black-is-white, up-is-down,
war-is-peace mode, you have to check out this
administration on the environment. I am fascinated
by its rank chutzpah. The latest brass-balls moxie
episode was President Bush's Monday visit to the
Detroit Edison power plant in Monroe, Mich., which
he actually touted as a "living example" of why his
dandy Clear Skies (gag me) initiative is so good for
us all. "You're good stewards of the quality of the
air," Bush told the plant's pleased workers.
The Monroe plant is one of the worst polluters in
the country: In 2001, it sent 102,700 tons of sulfur
dioxide, the leading cause of acid rain, into the
atmosphere, along with 45,900 tons of nitrogen
oxide, 810 pounds of mercury and 17.6 million tons
of carbon dioxide. A study done in 2000 by ABT
Associates, which the Environmental Protection
Agency has used to measure the health effects of
pollution, says the plant annually causes 293
premature deaths, 5,740 asthma attacks and
50,298 lost work days.
Under Clear Skies (these people are going to kill
irony), the plant will continue to shed this gentle
beneficence on us all for the next 17 years.
According to environmental groups, the
administration's relaxation of clean air rules, known
as the "new source review," will allow the plant to
increase its emissions by more than 30,000 tons a
year, a 56 percent increase.
Bush told the happy Monrovians, "Lights went out
last month -- you know that. It recognizes that
we've got an issue with our electricity grid and we
need to modernize it. The quicker we put modern
equipment into our power plants, the quicker
people are going to get more reliable electricity."
Asked what Clear Skies (give us a break) had to do
with the aged electricity grid, according to The
Washington Post, "A senior Bush aide later said
that Bush was not asserting that the old clean air
rules led to the blackouts. 'We are unable to draw
any connection without further study.'" If that
wasn't what Bush asserted, then what was he
asserting? That guy must have listened to a
different speech than the one I did.
Clear Skies (I give up: I refuse to call it that),
which has yet to be enacted by Congress, is not to
be confused with the "new source review" rules,
which the administration has already changed. The
Misnomer sets up a system under which dirty plants
can buy "pollution credits" from clean plants and
keep polluting. New source review is a glitch in the
Clean Air Act passed in 1977. The Clean Air Act
"grandfathered in" more than 16,000 aging plants
and industrial facilities in the happy expectation
that they would gradually be in compliance in a few
years. The EPA estimates 30,000 Americans a year,
10 times as many were killed on Sept. 11, die each
year because the Clean Air standards on coal-fired
power plants have not been enforced.
Under new source review, these dirty plants could
perform routine maintenance without having to
install cleaner technologies, but any major changes
leading to more pollution have to meet Clean Air
standards. An excellent article in the current
all-environment issue of Mother Jones points out,
"For nearly three decades, these facilities have
gotten around the new source review rules by
continually expanding and calling it 'routine
maintenance.'"
In 1999, EPA's director tried a novel approach:
enforcing the law. The EPA filed lawsuits against
eight power companies that together produce
one-fifth of the nation's sulfur dioxide. By the end
of 2000, two of the largest polluters had agreed to
cut emissions by two-thirds, and others were lining
up to negotiate settlements. Then Bush brought in
Christine Whitman at EPA, who told Congress that
if she were an attorney for one of the sued
companies, "I would not settle anything." Presto,
the two settlements disappeared, and so did the
other offers.
A nice little example of the under-the-radar
technique was recently uncovered by Greenpeace
via a 2002 email from Myron Ebell of the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group heavily
funded by ExxonMobil. "Thanks for calling and
asking for our help," begins this chipper memo to
the White House Council for Environmental Quality.
Ebell goes on to describe his group's plan to
discredit an EPA study on climate change by filing a
lawsuit to suppress it. "We need to drive a wedge
between the president and those in the
administration who think they are serving the
president's interests by publishing this rubbish."
Two state attorneys general have asked Attorney
General John Ashcroft to investigate because the
memo "reveals great intimacy between CEI and
(the administration) in their strategizing about
ways to minimize the problem of global warming. It
also suggests the CEQ may have been directly
involved in efforts to undermine the United States'
official report, as well as the authority of the EPA
administrator."
Of course, John (Lost to a Dead Guy) Ashcroft is
too busy to check it out because he's now out on
a "charm offensive" to convince us all that the
PATRIOT act is good for us. I always think of John
Ashcroft and charm in the same sentence. Sex,
too.
By the by, I'm sure The Washington Post was
making no editorial comment when it closed its
story on the Monroe visit with this additional fact:
"After his speech in Michigan, Bush flew to
Philadelphia to a fund-raiser that brought in $1.4
million for his re-election effort."
Read more in the Molly Ivins archive.
Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The
Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books
including Molly Ivins Can't Say That Can She? |
