EPA Tries to Explain Itself
<p>EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson issued a long <a id="fxc1" title="explanation"
Jul 31, 2020205.9K Shares2.7M Views
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson issued a long justificationfor his Dec. 19 refusal of California’s right to regulate tail-pipe greenhouse gas emissions. The gist of the 47-page explanation is this: because regulating greenhouse gases from vehicles in California won’t substantially affect climate change in California per se, it isn’t covered by the type of waiver that EPA in the past granted California each time it wanted to pass its own environmental regulations. That is, Johnson isn’t saying that greenhouse gases and climate change aren’t a serious problem. And he isn’t saying that California can’t justify its own regulation of other air pollutants–particulates, sulfur dioxide etc–because those California emissions cause harm in California. Whereas whatever harm comes from greenhouse gases harms globally, and thus shouldn’t be regulated locally.
There is some perverse logic to this thinking, but it seems pretty clearly to have been post hoc. The Bush administration has been trying to delay greenhouse gas regulation for seven years. The White House hasn’t cleared EPA’s ownregulations, despite being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court last April. Johnson’s aides urged him to grant the waiver or resign, saying it would besmirch his reputation if he refused. But the die was cast long ago. A document released by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca) this week is particularly revealing. "I think we should assert the existence of preemption [i.e., the EPA's right to preempt state regulators] and propose to deny the waiver based on absence of compelling and extraordinary conditions." That was written by EPA political appointee Bill Wehrum — On March 15, 2006.
Rhyley Carney
Reviewer
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