By Judith Gayle | Political Waves (the Planet Waves politics blog)
While conservatives are doing just about everything they can think of to stop it, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead aggressively to regulate greenhouse gases, protect the public from health hazards and reverse the sometimes illegal practices of the Bush years. After a slow start and some missteps, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson seems to have turned the agency around.
She got howls and rocks thrown from the left when she began her duties in 2009, continuing the policies of the Bush administration, particularly in regard to mountain-top removal. But now, she’s settled in, proved an aggressive champion of the environment and put science back on the table, something long ignored by the Bushies who considered any environmental protections an assault upon free enterprise.
Jackson admits that it took a while to evaluate the problems and restore the dedicated career employees who had been shunted to the side during Bush’s tenure. Bush was particularly aggressive early on in turning back these protections, proving his complicity with conservative ideology and offering a boon to corporate power grab. Early in the century, that was my first red flag that science was in for a bad ride under the Texas Terror, I just didn’t foresee it being discredited as a liberal ploy to increase government.
Even now, the Republicans are arguing that the environment doesn’t NEED protections — this week, the EPA held a public hearing in regard to a proposed overhaul of Bush’s weak smog standards and Jackson was urged to drop the smog proposal “since the premise on which it was advanced is flawed.” Like global warming, I suppose, smog isn’t real? These guys obviously don’t live in Los Angeles.
In 2007, the Supreme Court chided the EPA for failing to regulate greenhouse gases, given their latitude to pursue regulations and declare health hazards, as awarded by the Clean Air Act — Jackson has taken advantage of that ruling to tighten control over pollutants and set new standards. Obama needs the EPA to nibble away at the problem from the bottom, while he attempts to address it from the top
This is one of those agencies that the public ignores, confident that it works in their favor. It hasn’t for quite some time, but Lisa Jackson has turned that around. With public protection and environmental issues an uphill battle in the coming years, Obama has proposed an increase in the EPA budget, getting them ready for battle. From bio-fuels to emissions to clean air to water, we’ll be hearing more from the EPA in coming years — and this time, science and common sense will get a place at the table.
Here’s a link to an article in Rolling Stone that fleshes out Jackson’s accomplishments in turning back the Bush years.
Jude
My apologies to all well-meaning Texans out there!
Please don’t call him the Texas Terror! The Bush family is NOT from Texas and W spent very little time there. It was a brilliant move for the family to establish residency in two states with so many electoral votes and to develop southern accents, but their accents are as affectated as their patriotism. As my friend Mike says “The only thing W did in Texas was everyone else’s cocaine!”
Hi B
You can read the article I pulled from [after the fold] in todays Political Waves post:
http://polwaves.planetwaves.net/2010/02/04/putting-protection-back-in-epa/
The comment was from a hired gun, of course. I can’t imagine what working for a government agency under Bush must have been like … unless one was a ‘minion’ and happy for the chance to drown government in the tub, as Nordquist suggested. Bless your brothers heart, he must have been relieved to go.
Jude,
Thanks for your efforts, all of them, but especially in trying to restore the public’s confidence in the EPA. How quickly it seems that the Bush bunch gutted the morale and good work of this organization, and how long it will take to bring it up the standards it once enjoyed. I can imagine how unhappy the folks who work there had become, my brother was one of them and he took early retirement.
“Jackson was urged to drop the smog proposal”. . . .I’m curious as to who was doing that. Will check out the Rolling Stone article for clues to that brilliant advice!
Thank you, Jude, for bringing attention to an agency nearly rendered moot by malign neglect. As you have indicated, it’s going to take a while. The question is will the EPA’s dliberate efforts be enough, fast enough? We must take what improvements we can get, one would suppose. In the meantime, don’t drink out of the tap unless it’s attached to a keg.