It's Official: Bush Admin will do zero on global warming

Today the news will become official during a press conference with the EPA.

The Bush administration plans to do absolutely zero about global warming during its final days, even under order from the Supreme Court to get on the ball.

WashPost has the first of many stories we expect today on this subject.

EPA Won't Act on Emissions This Year
Instead of New Rules, More Comment Sought

The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce today that it will seek months of further public comment on the threat posed by global warming to human health and welfare -- a matter that federal climate experts and international scientists have repeatedly said should be urgently addressed.

Washington Post

Sadly, this was all expected. The oilmen who run our country have done everything in their power to deny that human-caused global warming is occurring, and after the data mountain was far too high, they have just continued stonewalling on the issue.

More from the Post

The decision to solicit further comment overrides the EPA's written recommendation from December. Officials said a few senior White House officials were unwilling to allow the EPA to state officially that global warming harms human welfare. Doing so would legally trigger sweeping regulatory requirements under the 45-year-old Clean Air Act, one of the pillars of U.S. environmental protection, and would cost utilities, automakers and others billions of dollars while also bringing economic benefits, EPA's analyses found.

"They argued that this increase in regulation should be on the next president's record," not Bush's, said a participant in the lengthy interagency debate, referring principally to officials in the office of Vice President Cheney, on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, on the National Economic Council and in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Several EPA officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that throughout the process, White House officials instructed the agency to change their calculations with the aim of reducing the "social cost of carbon," a regulatory term that reflects the economic burdens stemming from greenhouse gas emissions.

Career EPA officials argued that the global benefits of reducing carbon are worth at least $40 per ton, but Bush appointees changed the final document to say the figure is just an example, not an official estimate. They prohibited the agency from submitting a 21-page document titled "Technical Support Document on Benefits of Reducing GHG Emissions" as part of today's announcement.

"The administration didn't want to show a high-dollar value for reducing carbon," said one EPA official, adding that the administration cut dozens of pages from a draft that outlined cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gases.

So it is important to know that many career people inside the EPA wanted to do the right thing, but their political appointee overlords would not allow it.

Yet another sad day for Americans who seek greater involvement in the world.

Not only is Bush the "worst President ever" with today's official proclamation of inaction, he may just prove himself to be one of the worst world leaders ever, a man who dodged responsibility and hid under the table when faced with humanity's biggest environmental crisis.

There will be much more on this today.