President Bush is working on his legacy

July 11, 11:56 AMProgressive Politics ExaminerJay McDonough

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The President has, apparently, decided to punt on the environment once again.  From the Washington Post:

The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and welfare -- a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.

Fifteen months ago, the Supreme Court ruled the Environmental Protection Agency was required to decide whether human health and welfare were being harmed by greenhouse gases or provide an explanation on not acting.  The Bush Administrations response has been a series of juvenile stunts to hinder any progress; editing testimony, refusing documents, and bogus requests for changes to computer models.

The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA's written recommendation from December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare. Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection, and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA's analyses found.

Several EPA officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that throughout the process, White House officials instructed the agency to change their calculations with the aim of reducing the "social cost of carbon," a regulatory term that reflects the economic burdens stemming from greenhouse gas emissions.

"The administration didn't want to show a high-dollar value for reducing carbon," said one EPA official, adding that the administration cut dozens of pages from a draft that outlined cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases.

192 days left until January 20, 2009.  It can't come soon enough.