One interesting fact I learned from this article:
Nevada Senator Ensign has rescinded his support for
the energy bill. So the GOP leadership needs to find
three extra votes now to beat the filibuster.
Cheers,
Laurie Belin
www.salon.com
A meaner, greener EPA
For three years, the Bush administration and the power
industry have been happily entangled. Now it's time
for some election-year damage control -- courtesy of
the EPA.
From
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By Amanda Griscom
Feb. 5, 2004 | This election year, U.S. EPA chief
Mike Leavitt is playing the part of a Clean Air Act
tough guy -- for the time being, at least.
For three years, the Bush administration and the power
industry have been happily entangled in a session of
mutual back-scratching -- utilities have been generous
contributors to Bush and his Republican cohorts, and
the administration has conspicuously refrained from
filing a single lawsuit against an over-polluting
power plant. But last month Leavitt stirred things up
by taking a no-more-Mr.-Nice-Guy stance with
utilities; he announced that the administration would
take legal action against violators of the Clean Air
Act's New Source Review rule. Last week, right on cue,
the Justice Department slapped a lawsuit on a Kentucky
power co-op for violating the NSR; the co-op had
expanded two of its coal-burning plants without
installing the required antipollution equipment.
Enviros can be forgiven for greeting this newfound
green zealotry with skepticism. The Bush
administration has consistently echoed industry
complaints that the NSR is busting the utilities'
purse strings, and last summer the EPA approved rule
changes that would make it easier for power plants to
boost production while avoiding pricey
pollution-scrubbing technology. On Nov. 5 of last
year, the day before Leavitt stepped into office, the
EPA's top enforcement official revealed plans to
shutter backlogged investigations of 50 or more power
plants and possibly scrap 13 other NSR cases that the
Justice Department had been asked by the Clinton
administration to pursue.
The Bush administration started singing a slightly
different tune only after a federal appeals court on
Christmas Eve sided with a number of states and
environmental groups and temporarily blocked the NSR
overhaul. Leavitt's response was contradictory: He
appealed the court's ruling, but publicly made a show
of pledging to enforce the stronger NSR regulations
until the court made its final decision.
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To make good on that pledge, the Bush administration
undertook prosecution of the East Kentucky Power
Cooperative. Skeptics point out that the Kentucky
utility is a co-op, and since co-ops don't belong to
the utility industry's most powerful lobbying arm, the
Edison Electric Institute, they are virtually impotent
in the political arena. Moreover, Kentucky Power is
located in a solidly Republican state, so this case is
not likely to cost Bush any electoral votes.
"The big question is, why choose this Kentucky co-op?"
asked Kevin Curtis, vice president of public affairs
for the National Environmental Trust. "First off, this
is a very dirty co-op that would be in violation of
even their new weaker rules. It would have been a much
bigger statement if the administration had gone after
any one of the 70 cases they dropped in November. This
list includes a number of large, politically powerful
utilities that are in clear violation of the existing
NSR rules, such as the American Electric Power plant
in Ohio. It seems the EPA simply isn't willing to take
that political risk."
Chris Miller, a senior staffer for the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee, said the
agency had in the past estimated that 70 percent of
the utility industry was not complying with NSR rules.
"So the question is just how many of the
mega-polluters the EPA decides to bring to justice."
Hitting one polluter here or there, said Miller, by no
means ensures that the agency has a sound policy that
it's willing to enforce across the board.
Curtis concludes that the administration is merely
trying to construct an image of a greener, meaner
election-year EPA. "Simply put, [the Kentucky Power
case] appears to be part of a larger PR initiative to
try to do damage control on Bush's environmental image
now that the heat is on from the primaries," he said.
The same week the suit was announced, the
administration unveiled with great fanfare funding
increases for environmental projects in a number of
swing states, including a clean-bus initiative in
Pennsylvania, cleanups of the Great Lakes, a salmon
restoration project in the Northwest, and Everglades
conservation in Florida.
When Muckraker asked the Department of Justice how
many additional NSR cases the administration planned
to pursue, spokesperson Blaine Rethmeier said that for
now Kentucky Power was it -- there aren't likely to be
more actions anytime soon. "We have limited
resources," he explained. "At the moment, we've got
eight backlogged cases [from the Clinton
administration] that we are still litigating. It takes
a long time to move these cases forward."
Sylvia Lowrance, former head of enforcement at the
EPA, warned against losing sight of the big picture.
"The EPA is still in court supporting a rule that
undercuts the cases [against NSR violators] -- and the
mere filing of one or two cases won't overturn that
fact," she said. "We're talking about seriously mixed
messages, here. Then again, it's an election year.
Strange things happen in an election year."
A meaner, greener EPA | 1, 2
Isn't it ironic
Oh, the irony. The same week Fortune magazine released
a special "Climate Collapse" issue warning its
double-starched readers of "growing evidence" that
"abrupt climate change may well occur in the
not-too-distant future," Republican leaders in the
U.S. Senate have been attempting yet again to push
through an energy bill that would only intensify the
threat.
In late January, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., announced
that he would be "working closely with House
leadership to see what steps we can take to get the
last few votes we need for final passage." Soaring
gasoline and home-heating costs as well as threats of
blackouts due to a deep freeze in the Northeast have
fueled Domenici's argument that it's time to pass the
bill and step up energy production.
But worries about the federal deficit have changed the
budgetary climate, so to speak, and could foul up his
plan. The energy bill originally proposed by the White
House would have cost $18 billion, but after Domenici
larded it up with additional tax incentives and
subsidies in an effort to buy as many votes as
possible, the cost expanded to $31 billion. "There
have been growing nationwide concerns about America's
ballooning deficit, intensified by the primaries,"
said Bill Wicker, Democratic spokesperson for the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, "and
you can bet Karl Rove is putting pressure on senators
not to make [spending commitments] that add fuel to
the fire."
Discontent on this front is so pronounced that one
senator who formerly backed the energy bill, John
Ensign, R-Nev., recently rescinded his support on the
grounds that the legislation was loaded with too much
fat. That puts the bill three votes shy of passage --
three votes that won't be easy to come by.
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Domenici promised on Tuesday to trim significant fat
from the bill. It may be that his newfound parsimony
will attract a few votes, but then he may lose some
that were purchased with pork.
"Basically it will take very delicate surgery on the
part of the Republicans to try and keep this thing
alive," said Wicker. "Of course, they are twisting and
turning in the wind, trying to scrape together deals
to get three more votes, but based on all the inside
information we've gotten, nobody seems willing to
budge."
Domenici also proposed dropping a provision of the
bill that would grant liability relief to
manufacturers of the gasoline additive MTBE -- a move
that seriously irked Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, whose
home state is the top producer of the additive.
According to the Congress Daily newsletter, a source
in Domenici's office admitted that the MTBE move was
part of an exit strategy to ensure that if the energy
bill doesn't pass on its own, it can be attached as an
amendment to must-pass transportation legislation.
This "highway bill," which funnels money throughout
the country for highway development and other popular
projects, has overwhelming bipartisan support -- so
much support that it could include major components of
the energy bill and still make it through the Senate.
But in a strange twist, the senator most resistant to
this idea is James Inhofe, R-Okla., the notoriously
anti-environment chair of the Senate Environment and
Public Works Committee -- and the man ushering the
transportation bill through the Senate. This week,
Inhofe publicly rejected the idea of attaching the
energy bill to the highway legislation, warning, "I
really don't want to do that. I don't want to have any
non-germane amendments or parts of the energy bill."
Thus, a senator who has called global warming "the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people"
may, by putting a final roadblock in the path of the
energy bill, do more than any of his Republican
colleagues to prevent it.
Oh, the irony.
Exxon and on and on
ExxonMobil and its predecessor companies stretching
back to Standard Oil were responsible for a whopping 5
percent of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions
between 1882 and 2002, thanks to the companies'
operations and the burning of their products,
according to a recent study put out by the Coalition
for Environmentally Responsible Economies and Friends
of the Earth International.
The report exhorted Exxon shareholders to put pressure
on the company to begin more aggressively developing
its clean-energy portfolio and streamlining its
operations. "There has already been some successful
action by shareholders to change the direction of the
company, and now we are providing them with more
concrete and incontrovertible evidence to step up
these actions," said Jon Sohn, senior policy analyst
at FoE. "The report exposes the financial
repercussions related to liability that will occur
down the line if the company does not clean up its
act. Just as the tobacco industry suffered economic
losses from [cancer-related] liability, [so] the oil
industry faces the same financial risks."
According to Sohn, fast-improving techniques in
climate modeling make it possible to devise precise
climate-impact statements and measure a particular
company's liability. "The models for climate change
are becoming rapidly more sophisticated," he said. "We
are now finally able to determine very specifically
the causal relationship between changes in global
climate and manmade emissions, and then further pin it
down to specific companies and their carbon
contribution."
This is, indeed, the first time that the contribution
of one company to global climate change has been
calculated. Friends of the Earth says its new formula
for developing corporate "climate footprint
statements" will be used for a series of campaigns
against other energy companies in the future. FoE
should be applauded for boiling the vast and ambiguous
threat of climate change down to the brass tacks,
translating it into the kind of language that
corporate America can understand.
Muck it up
Here at Muckraker, we always try to keep our eyes
peeled and our ears to the ground (a real physiognomic
challenge). The more sources we have, the better -- so
if you are a fellow lantern-bearer in the dark caverns
of the Bush administration's environmental policy, let
us know. We welcome rumors, tips, whistleblowing,
insider info, top-secret documents, or other useful
tidbits on developments in environmental policy and
the people behind them. Please send 'em along to
[log in to unmask]
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