http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2008/11/bush-final-regulations.php#1172413Will Bush's Parting Shots Help Or Hurt?
Before leaving office, the Bush administration hopes to implement a host of wide-ranging regulations affecting the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, public lands protections and other key energy and environmental policies. Which of these rules are the most troublesome? Which are the most overdue?
-- Margaret Kriz, NationalJournal.com
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Responded on November 10, 2008 8:26 AM
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Chairman, House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming
White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton made it clear earlier this year that the Bush administration would avoid ramming through so called “midnight regulations” as they leave office by requiring all final agency rules to be completed by November 1, “except in extraordinary circumstances.” This deadline has come and gone, yet we’re still awaiting a wave of potentially devastating environmental rules to come down from several agencies. The “extraordinary circumstances” Bolton alluded to were apparently decisive Democratic victories in last week’s national elections. Bush’s successor will not share his unwavering commitment to de-regulation and giveaways to big business at the expense of the environment. Consequently, Bush now must try to finish the job himself, in the process cementing his legacy as the most anti-environment president in our nation’s history.
The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that I chair recently issued a report that examines the most notable rules that the Bush administration has targeted in its final weeks. Two of the most important laws under attack in Bush’s midnight regulations are the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. These long-standing laws represent decades of bi-partisan legislative progress as well as two of the central pillars of our country’s environmental protections.
The Clean Air Act’s New Source Review (NSR), a program that forces power plants to install pollution control technologies when making updates to facilities that increase their emissions, could be completely gutted in the next few weeks. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to finalize an NSR rule before the end of the administration that would essentially exempt all existing power plants from having to install new pollution control technology when these plants are updated. If put in place, the effect of the rule will be to allow old, dirty power plants to continue to increase emissions without having to install emissions control technologies. These proposed changes in pollution control follow the same faulty methodology Duke Power used in arguing its challenge to current NSR rules, which it ultimately lost in the Supreme Court in Duke v. EPA – decided the same day as the global warming case Massachusetts v. EPA. The responses to these two cases demonstrate perfectly the Bush administration’s approach to the environmental protection: new rules to allow more pollution in one case while totally ignoring EPA’s responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases in the other.
The Department of the Interior has already indicated its intention to gut the Endangered Species Act by rushing through 300,000 comments on proposed rules in 32 hours, then providing a mere 10-day public comment period on the Environmental Assessment of the proposed rules change. The proposed rules would take expert scientific review out of many Endangered Species Act processes, and could exempt consideration of the effects of global warming.
Perhaps no other step taken by the Bush administration demonstrates its disregard for global warming as the recent reports that Interior intends to finalize new regulations governing commercial development of oil shale on more than 2 million acres of public lands in the American West. At present, fundamental uncertainty remains about the technology that could ultimately be used for large-scale extraction, as well as the larger cost and environmental implications. Oil shale’s low energy content combined with its complex, expensive, and energy- and water-intensive extraction and refining requirements make it an extremely problematic energy option. Large-scale tar shale processing is estimated to produce five times the pre-combustion greenhouse gas emissions of conventional petroleum.
By reneging on his commitment to avoid midnight regulations, Bush will be turning his back on the environment a final time while giving one last gift to his polluting pals. With so much other work to be done on the economy, energy, and health care, it is unfortunate that the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Obama will have to invest time and energy trying to undo Bush’s final radical missteps.
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