Crossposted with The Green Grok
A tactical retreat or an abdication?
It's a scant 14 months to the 2012 elections. The economy's in the tank as are the president's poll numbers. (See here, here, here and here.) The pundits tell us (for instance here and here) that Obama will pivot to jobs, jobs, jobs in an effort to rehabilitate his re-election chances. In the wake of recent White House decisions, one has to wonder if that jobs pivot also includes a calculated pivot away from the environment?
 In the wake of recent White House decisions, one has to wonder if Obama's been making a calculated pivot away from the environment? |
On August 26, the State Department finalized a required environmental impact statement, concluding there'd be no "significant" environmental impacts from the proposed Keystone XL pipeline which would bring tar sands oil from Canada to American refineries in Texas. The pipeline is opposed by many environmentalists (see here, here and here) because its route goes directly across sensitive wilderness areas as well as the Ogallala Aquifer, a critical U.S. groundwater system. There's also general opposition to tar sands oil itself because of its relatively large environmental cost.
Though it's received an environmental green light, the pipeline is not a done deal yet. But the weeks of protests at the White House, which saw more than 1,000 arrested for civil disobedience, have now subsided. Not the kind of protest, I suspect, either Obama or the environmental community would have envisioned on election night 2008 (even if the reality of how much environmental progress could be made and how fast was duly noted).
And then last Friday came what John D. Walke, the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean air director, reportedly compared to "a bomb being dropped." (See here, here and Walke's blog post.) Said bomb was Obama's announcement that he was instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its proposed new air quality standard for ground-level ozone, one of the main, noxious components of smog.
This decision is especially disappointing to many of the green persuasion since it harks back to a bitter fight with the Bush administration. In 2008 the Bush EPA chose to set the ozone air quality standard at 0.075 parts per million, meaning that in a given eight hours in a defined region the amount of ground-level ozone in the air cannot exceed 7.5 "parts" of ozone per one million "parts" of air. This, despite recommendations by the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee that that standard could not be scientifically justified and that it should be set between 0.07 ppm and 0.06 ppm (the latter being the European Union's current standard).
When Lisa Jackson became EPA administrator in early 2009, she promised the agency would revisit the ozone standard before the statutorily required date of 2013. And work got off to a quick start. By September 2009, the process was formally underway, and in January 2010 EPA announced a proposed new standard between 0.06 and 0.07 ppm.
Everything looked to be on track for a final rule later that summer, but then came multiple delays and missed deadlines. After a July 2011 deadline came and went without a final rule, EPA promised that one was coming soon, one that would be "based on the best science and meet the obligation established under the Clean Air Act to protect the health of the American people" while "consider[ing] costs, jobs and the economy." And one that looked to be in the recommended range of 0.06 to 0.07 ppm. This move praised by some received loud protests from others, with industry claiming that the standard was overly tight, impossible to attain, and too costly in a struggling economy.
In a seeming cave to industry pressure, Obama announced he'd instructed EPA to delay changing the ozone standard until 2013 out of concern that promulgating a new standard would slow the economy and stifle job growth.
While this isn't his only punt on environmental issues (see here, here, here, and here), to be fair and balanced, we should duly note that Obama has been pushing forward on other environmental fronts, including the following:
Suffice it to say, not all of these initiatives have met with applause from industry.
So, is the president jettisoning his environmental agenda to appease the private sector and garner votes (and presumably campaign dollars)? Or is this latest decision a tactical one, perhaps throwing the opposition a bone (by law, the ozone standard has to be revisited at a later date anyway) while preserving the more essential pieces of environmental agenda?
The interesting aspect of this puzzle is that if Obama is not re-elected, we may never know.
Follow Bill Chameides on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheGreenGrok
Brendan Nyhan: Why Candidates Win: Tactics vs. Fundamentals
Philip Radford: Obama's Job: Protect Us From Pollution [video]
Obama choose to continue the Bush tax cuts, causing the further depression. Obama choose to not 14th amendment the debt ceiling (which we wouldn't have hit without the tax cuts and the bankster bailouts. ) Obama chooses not to 3 day recess appoint the regulators we need.
Obama told us he was not a liberal, the DLC gang he runs with have written they are anti populist, and believe in Reaganomics trickle down, deregulation, tax cutting, privaitizing dismantling of the Republic.
I knew that before I voted for him. I had not better choice. Kucinich, Dean, Grayson, any real effective liberal leader is rapidly sidelined. No liberal in power since Carter. Yet still the GOP/Tea call Obama a liberal, socialist, commies. Obama should join the GOP, he loves them far more than you citizens.
Obama and gang are for whomever buys them. The fossil and nukes companies spend 100 times as much as the green companies, and guess who gets the benefits, even though green energy is now cheaper than fossil and nukes. Chu's official report compares 1993 green costs to 2016 industry claim costs for fossil and nukes.
Figure it out.
Vote for the CPC progressive folks in the primaries. Dems in the general.
Everyone either remembers or has been told about how bad air pollution was in the 70's before the EPA. Places like L.A. could have over 90 days a year of smog alerts. That's days over 100 ppb ozone.
The EPA has helped clean air pollution where we have less than 5 now.
Now here's the obvious disconnect. As our air has improved - which is undeniable - the average rates of asthma has gone up! These are Inconvenient Truths!
Hey that's not all, the high air pollution state of Texas actually has a lower rate of asthma than the nation as a whole.
The next inconvenient truth - unlike in the 80's and 90's where reduction of pollution was also an undeniable economic benefit; since NAFTA and unrestricted free trade this is no longer the case.
In case you have not noticed large multinational corporation when faced with an expensive pollution upgrade just move. Those same multinational corporations facing higher utility bills because the utility has to make expensive pollution upgrades and passes on these expenses just move!
President Obama's gets the numbers and manufacturing jobs are down over 30% since 2000! Do we have to go over 80% loss in manufacturing before you NIMBY environmentalist see this is a short sighted plan????
Even tough 80% of the air molecules are nitrogen gas, it's presence has been mostly ignored in the past when we deal with pollution. It is not the gas itself that is a problem, but the individual atoms (reactive nitrogen), as they react with other chemical compounds, among many others to synthesize organic matter.
It is this huge increase of reactive nitrogen in our biosphere, due to synthesized fertilizer and the burning of fossil fuels, that finally is getting some attention and starts to questions the science of previous regulations, which were often based on emotions and not on science.
An example is how EPA ignored nitrogenous (urine and protein) sewage waste in its water pollution regulations and we now are experiencing dead zones in nearly all our open waters, while EPA, without correcting this initial omission, is initiating other programs that will cost money, but will not solve the problems. (www.petermaier.net)
President Obama is right, it is time to put all the emotional aspects on the side and solely focus on science to evaluate of all man caused environmental impacts, not only how they impact public health, but the entire biosphere, including global climate change.