EPA, Interior Department Chiefs Will Be Busy Erasing Bush's Mark

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: EPA, Interior Dept. Chiefs Will Be Busy Erasing Bush's Mark
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 28, 2008; A02

Few federal agencies are expected to undergo as radical a transformation under President-elect Barack Obama as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department, which have been at the epicenter of many of the Bush administration's most intense scientific and environmental controversies.

The agencies have different mandates -- the EPA holds sway over air and water pollution, while Interior administers the nation's vast federal land holdings as well as the Endangered Species Act -- but both deal with some of the country's most pressing environmental concerns, such as climate change. And over the past eight years, many career employees and rank-and-file scientists have clashed with Bush appointees over a number of those of issues, including whether the federal government should allow California to regulate tailpipe emissions from automobiles and how best to prevent imperiled species from disappearing altogether.

In June 2007, Obama told reporters in Reno, Nev., that he would not hesitate to reverse many of the environmental policies Bush has enacted by executive order.

"I think the slow chipping away against clean air and clean water has been deeply disturbing," Obama added. "Much of it hasn't gone through Congress. It was done by fiat. That is something that can be changed by an administration, in part by reinvigorating the EPA, which has been demoralized."

Global warming policies are expected to mark one of the sharpest breaks between the Obama and the Bush administrations.

EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson overruled his career advisers in deciding to deny California authority to control tailpipe emissions and rejecting their conclusion that global warming poses a threat to public welfare, and Obama is likely to reverse both of those policies shortly after taking office. This month, the president-elect told delegates to the Governors' Global Climate Summit that he would push for a federal cap-and-trade system designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and then to cut them an additional 80 percent by 2050, targets Bush has never embraced.

"Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response," Obama said in a videotaped message. "The stakes are too high, the consequences too serious."

Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, said that together, the two agencies will help shape the government's response to climate change....

***

"The Bush administration has cut so many special deals for industry that it could be a Herculean effort reversing them all," (Frank O'Donnell, who heads the advocacy group Clean Air Watch) said. "The new team is going to have to muck out the regulatory stables."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/27/AR2008112702184_pf.html

[elleng]

1. That will take a LOOOOONG TIME,

and we may never recover. Expect to hear from lots of bureaucrats.

[babylonsister]

2. I hate this and wish more people were railing against it.

There is this tiny bit of good news.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/environmentandenergy/arc...

A Thanksgiving Pardon For... Utah


Here's something to give thanks for this holiday weekend: the Bush administration is partially backing off on its plans to allow oil and gas drilling on land near Arches and Canyonlands national parks in Utah. The Bureau of Land Management had planned to auction the drilling leases for the affected areas on December 19, but after loud protests from the Park Service, environmental groups, and the Obama transition team, some of the most sensitive parcels will not be for sale.

Of all the Bush administration's parting shots on environmental policy, these leases would have been among the hardest to undo. The Obama administration will be able to reverse many of the outgoing administration's environmental rule changes by going through the rule-making process again, but once a drilling lease is sold, it becomes the property of the oil company that bought it and can't be taken back. That's why it's good news that some (though, unfortunately, not all) of Southern Utah's threatened wilderness areas have received an unexpected Thanksgiving pardon.

--Rob Inglis, High Country News

[babylonsister]

3. a.m. kick. nt

[Quantess]

4. K & R