Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Something to incite OGIW to reply:

""Elliot Spitzer, Senator James Jeffords, and others who make extravagant claims about the Bush new-source rule change never mention the complication that actual trends in air pollution are so inconveniently positive. True, trends might be even more positive had the Clinton-written rule remained in effect. Clinton's version of the rule was a good job and could have been left to stand; Browner, a very level-headed and reasonable person, put an awful lot of work into her rule and wanted it to be fair to utilities. (Power companies exaggerate the costs of new-source compliance just as enviros exaggerate the degree of emissions.) But the worst-case scenario for Bush's rule is that it will slow the future rate of pollution decline--which hardly sounds like the undoing of 30 years of clean-air policy, does it?

Finally, the Times Magazine story ignores or buries the really inconvenient complication that the Bush White House has taken some steps to make air pollution regulation more strict. Bush has put into force three powerful new pollution-reduction rules, one written by Browner and the others composed under Bush. One new rule mandates that diesel engines of trucks and buses be much cleaner; a second new rule mandates that "off road" power plants such as outboard motors and construction-machine engines be much cleaner; a third requires refineries to reduce the inherent pollution content of diesel fuel, this last rule enacted over the howls of Bush's core constituency, the oil boys. Taken together, these three new rules are the most important anti-pollution initiative since the 1991 Clean Air Act amendments that cracked down on acid rain. And because studies show that diesel fumes are bad for public health, Bush's new rules should produce at least as much public-health gain as the strictest interpretation of the new-source standard. Yet not a word of this in the Times Magazine article, since mention would undercut the premise."

Thoughts?