ChimpCo Moves Quickly To Slam GHG Comment Period With Raft Of Negative Agency Statements

The Bush administration yesterday unveiled but immediately disparaged a proposal to seek public comment on whether the government should regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, declaring at the outset that the proposed approach would be unworkable. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson wrote that he is nevertheless going ahead with the process of seeking comment in order to "respond to our legal obligations in a timely manner." In April 2007, the Supreme Court ordered the EPA to decide whether human health and welfare are being harmed by greenhouse gas pollution from cars, power plants and other sources, or to explain why it should not.

In an unprecedented move, however, Johnson issued the advanced notice of proposed rulemaking accompanied by a raft of comments from other agencies urging the government to abandon any effort to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases through existing law.

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In a letter dated July 10, Susan E. Dudley, administrator of the White House Office of Management and Budget's office of information and regulatory affairs, was similarly blunt. "The issues raised during interagency review are so significant that we have been unable to reach interagency consensus in a timely way, and as a result, this staff draft cannot be considered Administration policy or representative of the views of the Administration," Dudley wrote.

John Walke, director of the Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group, said the administration had squandered a chance to address the challenge of climate change. "This appalling document pits the Bush administration's political machinery against EPA's scientific and legal experts, with the machinery grinding up sound global warming science, legal authority, smart economics and solutions to the problem," Walke said. "These actions by the administration's political machinery deserve to end up, along with the administration's irresponsible global warming legacy, in the dustbin of history."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071101703.html

:shrug:

:toast: