Lame duck administration delays action by EPA until 2009

By Matthew B. Zeidman for Hollywood Today

WASHINGTON (RUSHPRNEWS) 7/13/08 – In what could perhaps be described as the Bush administration’s final act of intransigence against critics of its laissez-faire environmental policies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has extended the comment period on a global warming study it released Friday, guaranteeing no action can be taken based on its conclusions until after either Democratic candidate Barack Obama or Republican candidate John McCain is sworn into office next year.

The internal EPA study recognized manmade greenhouse gas emissions as a major contributor to global warming and warned of dangerous climate change should stricter controls not be implemented.

Because of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that recognized greenhouse gases as air pollutants, the EPA has no choice but to institute emission-reducing regulations if it receives evidence they are a public danger. While the delay will not relieve the agency of that responsibility, it will ensure changes will not be made under President Bush.

During Bush’s first year as president, he rejected the Kyoto Protocol, a United-Nations-sponsored agreement that required ratifying nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bush believed global warming was not a certainty and that the agreement would cause economic harm to the United States if other economically powerful nations failed to agree to the protocol. Bush is accused of promoting opinions that said there was no such thing as global warming, despite rapidly mounting and widespread evidence to the contrary.