The party of environmental protection; spoiled-brat edition
June 25, 2008
It’s hard to fathom the Bush Administration’s capacity for willful incompetence:
The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week. [...]
Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion (*) in economic benefits over the next 32 years.
The EPA found that it would be cost effective to impose an average 37.7 mpg efficiency standard on the nation’s automobiles. Not to be outdone, the administration “made its own fuel-economy proposals public almost two months ago; they were based on the assumption that gasoline would range from $2.26 per gallon in 2016 to $2.51 per gallon in 2030“.
Given that average gas prices two months ago were about $3.50 per gallon, it’s hard to see an analysis predicting $2.50 gas for the next twenty years as anything other than a deliberate fraud, or a cover letter for a job application to GM’s long-term strategy division.
The occasional conservative government is part of the normal cycle of politics. Sometimes they even have good ideas. But even if you’re a conservative who prefers that sort of thing, is a reality-based government too much to ask?
(*) You think they’d be happy with those kind of savings. After all, that much money would almost pay for the Iraq War.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I find myself in perpetual awe of this administration. I hope the American people have learned the lesson of what happens when you put an administration into power whose utter disgust for the rule of law and even the constitution is so blatantly exhibited.
I have thought for some time that this is nowhere near a conservative administration. It is fundamentally fascist to it’s core. That they call themselves conservative is only going to blot whatever honor is left in that movement.
When you think about the absolutely astounding hubris that has suffused the Bush “administration” and the Republican party that mindlessly enables them it just takes your breath away. Torture, subverting the constitutionally protected rights of habeus corpus and privacy , waging bogus war, ignoring the law via “signing” statements that directly contradict the will of the people as expressed by their representative government. Sweet Jesus! What else do they have to do to convince their mindless minions that they are evil?
I used to think that Nixon was as extreme as it gets (see the good doctor’s obit on him for a refresher http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/graffiti/crook.htm ), but he was clearly a short hitter in Bush’s league.
I still wonder why the Republicans, with all their money and power and “smarts” had to choose this manifestly incompetent bogo-rube to be their leader.
Must have been a death wish, I think. I hope it comes true….
June 25th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Here’s a question for you do you think H2O is a pollutant? Because if Green House gasses are it should be. I mean if what I naturally Exhale is a pollutantwhy isn’t water vaper wich has a much greater impact on the climate? While I’m at it Who says that the climate now is the perfect one? and since it is getting too hot what should we do to coool it and should we cool it?
July 28th, 2008 at 2:00 am
You should leave comments on your post open for longer.
The last comment on here is absurd. There are a lot of naturally occuring greenhouse gases. There are also naturally occuring climate cycles, which is part of why, beyond saying that human development has had a negative impact, we can’t say for sure in detail how strong that impact has been. The reality is that we can’t do anything about the greenhouse gases we breathe out, nor do we have an obligation to. We can’t do anything about water’s presence, nor do we have an obligation to. What we can do is do our best to reduce the massive amounts of extra greenhouse gases we emit doing things that no other species, or society, does.
As for the other post, on the “conservative conservation” issue. The government can’t impose a system where the free market will force companies to go green. The government can, however, do certain things. We can stop subsidizing biofuels and commercial agriculture whose energy use hardly makes up for the environmental or economic benefit. We can educate the public about the reality of our environmental footprint, inspiring more people to buy green.
I’m not telling you exactly where I stand on the issue, because I don’t really know, I’m just saying that from a truly “conservative” political standpoint, the “compassionate conservative” and the “conservation conservative” are simply degradations of what conservative political thought is all about. The Republican party is now leaning toward forcing people to provide public services to the rest of the population, and forcing businesses to conduct business in a certain way. Meanwhile, we’re forcing people to live their lives without abortion or gay marriage.
For a party that’s all about the free market and free will of people to do what they want with little government interference, the Party is doing a pretty crappy job, wouldn’t you say?