Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Clean air and the Bush administration's policies
I'll be the first to admit that I do not know enough about environmental policy to understand the hatred with which environmentalists confront the Bush administration. The National Review has an interesting, even if partisan, editorial on the Bush record on air pollution, which makes it sound as though the air has gotten significantly cleaner since Bush took office.
It’s a rather striking irony that, as our air grows cleaner, environmentalists’ complaints grow louder. Since 2001, they’ve been screaming that President Bush is “rolling back the Clean Air Act,” and that the resulting increase in air pollution will kill people by the thousands. Instead, every category of air pollution has fallen during the Bush years, with 2003, 2004, and 2005 showing the lowest levels of harmful ozone and particulates in the air since the monitoring of air pollution began in the 1960s. What exactly is going on?
If this and other upbeat factoids are true, then what is all the fury about? If the NRO's editorial is so much horse-pucky, how is it horse-pucky? I, for one, would very much appreciate it if some of our esteemed lefty readers would contend with the logic (as opposed to the snarkiness) in the linked editorial. Fire away!
9 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Jul 25, 04:56:00 PM:
The environment means nothing to them. Only the Leftist religion.
By 
GreenmanTim, at
Tue Jul 25, 05:03:00 PM:
Nationwide monitoring of fine particulates ( PM 2.5 )began in 1999, so there are only a few years to use for comparison of relative air quality with regard to this indicator. EPA claims that both fine and larger particulate levels have been improving due to its Acid Rain Program and other programs aimed at reducing emissions. Air quality measures -in aggregate- for the nation has dramatically improved since passage of the Clean Air Act in the Nixon Administration.
EPA has put more than 12 significant emissions programs in place since 1990 to reduce ozone causing pollutants and credits these efforts with dropping emissions and ozone levels. 1998's NOx SIP Call is arguably the most effective of these programs and has nearly 100% state compliance.
Good programs and effective agencies deserve to be strengthened and supported, regardless of which administration is in office at the time when policies were enacted. The reductions in ozone contributing emissions and particulates are part of a 35-year trend, the foundation of which is the Clean Air Act. Your recent visit to China illustrates precisely what happens when you do not have strong regulations in place to safeguard air quality.
Despite these improvements, the gains we have seen are a far cry from what is required to have breathable air for many regions of the country on most days of the year. Nor do they adequately address the long-term impacts of still unsustainable levels of ozone causing pollutants, both in this country and in other industrialized and induistrializing nations, on global climate.
It is significant that EPA does not point to the Healthy Skies Initiative as the reason for this improvement, but instead credits more than three decades of steady and more effective environmental policy.
By Cardinalpark, at
Tue Jul 25, 05:24:00 PM:
The environmental gig that really gets my goat is the use of agricultural biotechnology (gentically modified organisms) to improve and enhance the food supply. Here the environmentalists have proven themselves absolute Luddites. Without any science, they make wild-eyed, asnine claims about frankenfoods and other such nonsense. As a result, instead of enabling the massive overproduction of supplies (which would kill inefficient European farmers -- the true political force behind the idiotic green food silliness) with loads of additional nutrients, we instead see starvation in Africa.
The political "environmental" greens behind this crap are simply ignorant.
By , at
Tue Jul 25, 07:46:00 PM:
Starvation in Africa has nothing to do with worldwide food production, it has to do with inefficient distribution. Now for that you could blame capitalism, socialism, kleptocrats, or whoever you feel like blaming.
By GreenmanTim, at
Tue Jul 25, 08:07:00 PM:
I have said elsewhere and am happy to repeat here that I believe that conservation should be a mainstream, bi-partisan value, rather than "a personal virtue" as our Vice President has said, or a political wedge driven between us by the extremes of the left and right.
I am by inclination someone who looks for opportunities to establish common ground with folks of very different backgrounds, persuasions and politics. Opinion polls in very conservative rural communities as well as in liberal bastions time and again show that regardless of how we self-identify, the vast majority of Americans value clean air and water, love our pets and want a nice place to live. Nearly 80% of the open space bond initiatives launched across the US in 2003 passed. There is plenty of evidence that it is to our mutual benefit to find ways to get beyond polemics on environmental issues.
We differ on tactics even in our own camps - heck, there is a very wide diversity of folks who call themselves environmentalists, from old school New England Republicans in the Baxter/Chaffee mold to radical Monkey-wrenchers. Why else, besides the ties of distant kinship, would I be a regular reader and commentor here at Tigerhawk? Common ground, friends, and a belief in dialogue rather than diatribe wherever possible. Mind you, a few well-placed dope slaps to the left and right may sometimes be absolutely appropriate. I get upset about fundamentalists of all stripes, on the extreme right as well as extreme left, but I'm not likely to tar someone who stands right of center with that brush on the first date. Especialy not in their own house.
By Purple Avenger, at
Tue Jul 25, 08:28:00 PM:
I get upset about fundamentalists of all stripes
Why? Do you harbor preconceived notions of what population demographics should be?
"Fundamentalists" have been around for thousands of years and I expect thousands more long after we're all dead.
Get used to it.
By GreenmanTim, at
Tue Jul 25, 09:11:00 PM:
Quite a quick conclusion you jump to, PA. If one were as inclined to make such hasty evaluations, one might conclude my comment about disliking fundamentalism was a bit close to the bone.
By , at
Tue Jul 25, 09:55:00 PM:
By most measures in most areas of the country the air has shown consistently and measurably lower peak and average concentrations of most pollutants over the last 40 years. This is hard fact, verified by widespread and comprehensive air monitoring. Anybody who says otherwise is either ignorant of the science (and shouldn't be listened to because), or is intentionally lying for whatever reason (and also shouldn't be listened to because).
This reduction in pollutants has come about primarily by cleaner automobile technology and major reductions in industrial emissions. The programs (primarily federal) that achieved these reductions have been implemented, improved, and enforced by every administration without much variation (including, gasp...Bush) since the passage of the original Clean Air Act.
I'll leave it to the reader's imagination as to why many mainstream environmental organizations so trash the current administration’s record on air quality. Here’s a hint though: go back and read what they said about Reagan.
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Thu Jul 27, 12:03:00 AM:
I suspect the crazed criticism comes not so much from environmentalism but from a desire to have one's world-view validated. Sane criticism should of course be attended to. The rhetoric being what it is, it's hard to separate out these days.
