RAPE THE PLANET
or
BUSH'S ENVIRONMENTAL RUNAROUND

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Bush has own pollution plan

President Bush will make air pollution a top priority in Congress early next year, starting with "an aggressive push" to build support for his pollution-cutting plan, senior administration officials said Saturday.

At the same time, the administration will hold off until no later than March on a rule to cut pollution from power plants that would accomplish some of the same ends as Bush's anti-pollution plan, the officials told the Associated Press.

The White House on Saturday told the Environmental Protection Agency of its game plan, which is meant to allow time for Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., sponsor of Bush's "Clear Skies" initiative, to hold hearings on it in January.

"The president decided to make a strong push at the start of next year to complete his clean air and clean energy agenda," said EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt, who met with Bush to discuss the strategy earlier in the week. "And we now have a framework under which we will proceed."

This kinda sounds like the runaround if you ask me. In fact, that's exactly what critics are saying:

"The Bush administration is now staking its money on a bill in Congress that weakens and delays public health protections already provided under the current Clean Air Act, while forcing the EPA to delay public health protections under current law," said John Walke, director of clean air programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Click here for the rest.

Conservatives know that environmentalism is popular, but they sneer at it privately; their wealthy, polluting campaign contributors demand that the government ease up on environmental regulations. What's a conservative politician to do? Answer: talk the talk while doing everything possible to avoid walking the walk.

Again from the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

EPA lets refineries miss deadline - again

Federal officials have quietly allowed the nation's oil refineries to miss court-ordered deadlines to reduce air emissions, prolonging the public's exposure to dangerous pollutants, a newspaper investigation has found.

Nearly every time, the Environmental Protection Agency failed to tell the courts or the public about the deadline extensions, even when legal settlements required it to do so, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported today.

Because of those extensions, the EPA's Petroleum Refinery Initiative has not achieved the air quality improvements that the agency has claimed, the newspaper found.

Click here for the rest.

They delay and stall passing legislation. They stall and delay implementing policy. And, as the above excerpt shows, they drag their feet enforcing existing rules. Don't be fooled: any time a conservative talks about reducing pollution, he's lying. There's no such thing as an environmentalist conservative. Period.

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