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States Confront Climate Challenge As Bush Administration Continues Denial
First the White House refused to open an email containing a report on greenhouse gases from the Environmental Protection Agency. The administration’s hope, presumably, was that if they ignored the email for long enough it would cease to exist. This move forced the EPA to dilute the report, though it is still not palatable to the administration. Now the Defense Department has decided to join the latest fight against the environment by refusing to follow EPA orders to clean up carcinogenic chemicals and other toxic waste at three military bases which are listed by the EPA as among the most polluted sites in the country. And though the administration finally conceded a few weeks ago that climate change is real, seven years have passed since President Bush’s decision to opt out of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the United States is still struggling to enact any aggressive emissions reduction legislation on the federal level.
The good news: because of this gap in federal action, some states such as California, New Hampshire, and Florida have stepped up to the challenge and put their own policies in action to try to reduce GHG emissions. The bad news: the actions of states alone will not be enough. A report put out by the Pew Center asserts that federal policy is necessary to encourage the innovation that will lead to cleaner energy technology, to create a national mandate, and to involve the
It is obvious that the next administration will have a lot of work to catch the
Comments on this article
A few years ago (4, google tells me) a bunch of scientist published “Scientific Integrity in Policy Making” which criticized the way the Bush Administration distorted, manipulated, or ignored the scientific reports on which their decisions were supposedly made. Though it was signed by 12,000 scientists, it doesn’t seem to have made a difference. The White House probably just didn’t open the attachment.
July 1st, 2008 at 11:45 amBut maybe in a way this is sort of a good thing. One of the great, nifty things that’s always touted by people who love federalism is that it allows the states to be “micro-labs” for new and evolving legislation. They get to try out new, wacky approaches to solving problems on a smaller scale, and then the ideas that really work become popular enough that they get federal government support. So if California really takes the lead and comes out with some ambitious legislation, they can show the rest of the country that (1) environmental regulation doesn’t cripple the economy; and (2) can in fact stimulate it. ..yeah?
July 1st, 2008 at 6:22 pm