Bush Backtracking on Cleaner Air

http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df12052003.html

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Tuesday, the Bush administration announced its revisions to mercury emission rules emissions, one day before President Bush asserted that "we all share duties of stewardship." The administration's alternative, a cap-and-trade system that was requested by the industry, would allow power plants to buy and sell the right to emit mercury.

While this system already exists with sulfur dioxide, the environmental community points out that pregnant women and young children are vulnerable to mercury exposure, leading to developmental problems. About one out of every 12 women (4.9 million) of childbearing age has unusually elevated levels of mercury, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta."

On the same day that he gave his introductory address to employees of the Environmental Protection Agency, newly installed Environmental Protection Agency administrator Mike Leavitt said of the changes, "Frankly, we're just not satisfied with the level of reduction you get from the mercury MACT, so we're making the dual proposal." But a December 2001 Power Point presentation that then EPA administrator Christie Whitman indicated that the rules being rejected would have reduced emissions from the current 48 tons per year to 5 tons per year by 2007. The new proposal Leavitt's backing, however, calls for a reduction to 34 tons by 20104, and would install regulations "three times less stringent and would take 10 years longer to achieve than reductions critics say are required under the Clean Air Act."
...
Continuing the administration's habit of releasing potentially controversial environmental rules on the eve of holidays, the document was released the day before Thanksgiving.
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Also, RJK Jr's article on Bush and the environment was printed in part in the British newspaper The Indpendent yesterday.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=469820

Great stuff.

s_m

He was never for clean air in the first place....

"Bush rolls back yet another environmental safeguard" is more like it.

s_m