EPA to twiddle thumbs, shuffle feet.

Seems as if earlier skepticism was right. I know, I know, I'm great. You can stop applauding me for foreseeing an obvious turn of events. Simply put, despite Bush agreeing to a vague and non-specific goal of cutting emissions at the G8 meeting, the EPA isn't going to implement anything new this year.

On one level this is good. We won't have the Bush Administration making up ludicrous policies with no benefit to the country or the environment. They might just decide we need to be exposed to more arsenic in the air, or that 1 out of 3 homes need a coal strip-mine in their backyard. On another level, it's bad that nothing will get done for yet another year, and we do another year's worth of damage from the already slashed and gutted EPA regulations and almost non-existent enforcement.

But the article is worth reading just to see how far the Bush EPA is willing to go to deny science, mangle facts and figures to their liking, bury reports, and mangle future projections. For instance they estimate that oil will cost 1/3 of it's current price so that they can claim a lower benefit for enacting stricter fuel standards. Or how the EPA is not allowed to admit that global warming harms stuff because that would legally trigger regulatory requirements. Or as Ed Markey (D-Mass) puts it "If this administration spent the same effort fighting global warming as they do editing and censoring global warming documents, the planet might not be in such dire straits." Not to mention that Bush Administration officials like Chase Hutto were more worried about greenhouse gas controls doing away with large American automobiles instead of the damage to the environment which his agency is supposed to protect (hence the clever EPA name). Did I mention his grandfather was a Ford bigwig? You probably guessed it anyway.

This is just the exact same pattern and attitude that has permeated every Bush fiasco. Ignore the career experts cause we know better. Suppress fact that don't say what we want. Ignore trends that don't show what we want. If the experts don't say what we want, change the experts. When in doubt, lie with every breath. When the inevitable failure occurs, claim "No one could have foreseen this." Eye up the next victim. Salt the earth on your way out.