EPA delays the inevitable on greenhouse gases

July 18, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

Dallas Morning News: Americans apparently will have to wait for the next president to see any responsible action on regulating greenhouse gases. The Bush administration seems to be crossing its arms, closing its eyes and holding its breath until the bitter end to avoid doing the right thing on climate change.

More than a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court told the Environmental Protection Agency that greenhouse gases were a pollutant and ruled that the agency had a duty to regulate them unless it could come up with valid scientific reasons why it shouldn’t.

What court order?

Last week, EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson effectively told the high court to blow that ruling out its collective tailpipe. In a foreword to the EPA’s own court-ordered scientific study, he said the agency has no intention of restricting greenhouse-gas emissions — this, despite the report’s conclusion that those emissions pose a significant risk to public health.

In a troubling related development, Jason Burnett, former EPA deputy associate administrator, alleged last week that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had ordered six pages of congressional testimony slashed before delivery. Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was to tell Congress that the CDC viewed climate change as a “serious public health concern.”

The EPA’s Johnson concluded last week that the cost of regulating greenhouse gases would be too burdensome for the economy. An earlier draft of the study found that cutting emissions could save $2 trillion over 30 years — a number cut by more than half in the final draft, based on $2-a-gallon gas.

Sooner or later, greenhouse gases will be regulated. Delay will only make doing the inevitable harder and more expensive.

It is sad that when it comes to protecting the environment from global warming, which he admits is a problem, President Bush seems content to leave a legacy of all hat and no cattle.