The Politicization of EPA: The Administration’s Radical Endangerment Gamble
Alan Carlin | December 8, 2009On Monday EPA announced its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases. One can infer from the timing of the announcement that the Administration may have taken this action at this time in order to bring something to the table at the Copenhagen COP15 meeting. From a scientific viewpoint it was an odd time to do so given that the very recent Climategate disclosures would presumably have taken some time to digest and analyze for their possible effects on vital conclusions. So the timing may have been based more on the political rather than the scientific factors involved.
But from a larger viewpoint, the Obama who was going to find a way to resolve partisan bickering in Washington has now embarked on a major escalation of the conflict by using the power he holds over Executive Branch agencies to fight its enemies in Congress over the issue of global warming. Although EPA has always been organizationally an arm of the Administration in power, it has until this Administration been able to largely maintain the appearance if not the reality of being science based. That is now much harder to maintain.
Originally the rumor was that the purpose of the endangerment finding would be to pressure Congress into approving a cap and trade bill. But by now it appears fairly clear that the Administration will not be able to gather the needed votes in the Senate to pass the bill at least this year and probably even next year either with or without an endangerment finding. So there would seem to be little reason to push the endangerment finding now unless they intended to attempt to use it as the basis for negotiating at COP15.
Some Major Political Risks
This EPA endangerment approach carries some major risks for the Administration, however. The first risk is that EPA’s apparently politically motivated endangerment finding may be overturned in the now inevitable court reviews.
The second risk is that when implementing greenhouse gas regulations should be announced and certainly when they should ever be implemented the full responsibility will obviously fall onto the Administration rather than being shared between the Administration and Congress, which is what would occur if Congress ever adopted a cap and trade bill. So if many constituents end up being unhappy with the resulting regulations and particularly the greatly increased energy costs and decreased employment that will result it will be obvious who was responsible. And there may well be some unhappy constituents.
A third risk is that they will not be able to contain EPA’s actions since the law clearly specifies that much smaller sources are subject to regulation than they now contemplate, and legal action may force EPA to regulate smaller sources whether it wants to or not.
A fourth risk is that the added uncertainties created by the finding and the added costs in terms of higher energy prices and reduced employment will further weaken the Administration’s claims to be primarily interested in combatting the recession, the issue currently most on the mind of voters.
Some Additional Risks from the International Negotiations Needed to Insure a Worldwide Effort
But there are other risks as well. Suppose the COP15 meeting is unable to reach any agreement that the Administration can sell domestically? Or suppose that there is agreement on a new climate protocol and it comes into force but only a few countries actually live up to what they have agreed to, as has been the case for the Kyoto Protocol, so that what little effect reductions in CO2 may have on global temperatures is lost in the increased emissions of those countries that do not take promised reductions seriously. Or suppose that the developing world says that they will only support a new treaty if the developed world pays the bill, as they have so far done? Is the Administration willing to support a massive foreign aid bill providing funds to the UN, or one of its agencies such as the World Bank, to disperse as they may decide in the middle of the most serious recession of the postwar era to meet these demands by the developing world? Suppose the Russians will agree to a new treaty only if their credits resulting from the collapse of Soviet era manufacturing are honored in a new protocol, meaning that they would face very limited requirements? So the Administration seems to be gambling not only that Americans will not rebel against the potential EPA restrictions but that it can push through a massive UN-administered foreign aid program. And then there is the problem of how to get any possible new protocol through the Senate, which this time would require 67 votes rather than 60 needed for cap and trade. All this seems to me to be quite a gamble.
And just to make things worse from the Administration’s viewpoint, it is not only now clear that key parts of the global warmists’/UN science is scientifically incorrect (see my March Comments and my more recent blog post); it is now also clear how it is that their science came to be the way it is since we now have some of the actual programs used to bring this about as well as some of the Email and programming comments of some of those working to bring this about. Even Mother Nature is not cooperating with very cold, wintry weather sweeping the United States this week.
Finally, public support for the global warming/UN science and greenhouse gas regulation is dropping rapidly. So is it wise for the Administration to take all these risks from a political viewpoint? Or is the outcome going to be similar to the recent one in Australia, where last week Parliament turned down a cap a trade bill for the second time. Unless the Administration is driven solely by a radical environmental agenda come what may, the only rational conclusion is that they think they can somehow overcome all these major risks. The loss of even one of these sub-gambles may doom the lot. So perhaps they are driven primarily by environmental dogma rather than political calculation? Maybe they actually still believe that they are saving the world despite the demonstrably bad science they have endorsed in order to support this view?
The Skeptics Are Also Unlikely to Be Willing to Compromise
On the other side of the issue, the skeptics are unlikely to be willing to compromise given the recent confirmation of their suspicions concerning how the warmists’ science was derived. From their viewpoint there appear to be only a limited number of options:
- Assume that at least one of the lawsuits that may emerge will be upheld by the courts.
- Look for a must-pass bill to attach a rider that prohibits funds being used to implement greenhouse gas controls under the Clean Air Act.
- Use the Congressional Review Act to overrule the endangerment finding.
Whichever of these options the skeptics may pursue, the outcome will be the still further politicization of EPA. This may have much longer lasting effects than the current fight over global warming control and could lead to the end of EPA as a primarily science-based Agency.
This process has been going on for years, well before I retired over eighteen years ago. The agency is filled with political appointees who wish to please the their appointer. Career administrators wish to please these appointees. Those doing the research are under pressure to please their bosses. The result is the development of another political agency doing subjective rather than objective research. The IPCC was founded as a political agency to do subjective research (prove AGW). This reported finding marks the death of objective research at EPA and calls into question the agencies ability to regulate pollutants that are actually an endangerment.
“This reported finding marks the death of objective research at EPA and calls into question the agencies ability to regulate pollutants that are actually an endangerment.”
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More accurately, it marks the second serious attempt at suicide by the agency, once again by Browner’s hand. Sadly, I suspect that help will once again arrive before the patient expires.
Back in the eighties, the EPA, led by (gasp!) Carol Browner, made the same sort of unsupported, ideology-driven endangerment finding as to cigarette smoke. Browner announced that 3000 people died every year from exposure to second-hand smoke. She was never able to provide any evidence to support this claim.
The Fed court – through the hand of U. S. District Court Judge William Osteen – ruled that the agency had no support for the endangerment finding, and revoked it.
Judge Osteen’s analysis showed that this agency had reached its conclusion prior to any research, then adjusted standard scientific practices to validate its faulty conclusions. Sound familiar?
Carol Browner’s appointers love her, as she does the idiotic, unsupported, ideologically-driven, scientifically-unsound things that they really want to do but don’t dare because they’re too outlandish.
Now watch as we end up with a cap-and-trade bill after all. This move will provide cover for enough switched votes to get it in. (“But if we didn’t pass this, the EPA was going to start shutting my state’s industry down!”)
A very thoughtful and IMHO correct analysis of the situation, as usual! Thank you for your service to your country!
Its really up to the political party in power as to whether it wants to follow good science or not.
There is a tremendous amount of weak science that is spewed out of universities. And some Congresspersons respond to the fears or claims of constituents, no matter how ill-founded.
Many people call themselves activists. This suggests they favor a position, just to campaign for something, with little concern as to whether their cause is sensible.
The problems are not just evident within EPA. They are endemic throughout academia. Universities love to grab climate dollars and build their bureaucracies. Journalists often have very little understanding or insight into issues and many will be biased to promote fears.
A positive countervailing force is the Web. The Web allows critics to contribute their viewpoints.
Unfortunately, Mr. Carlin, a fair amount of past EPA “science” regarding chemicals has long been oversimplified, uncertain, or poor. Its good not to be too dismayed by the C02 endangerment finding. Its nonsense, but life goes on and in due course better sense will prevail.
Dr. Carlin, to add one additonal thought.
Thanks for not being an eco-communist watermelon. Its nice there are some honest folks left in government service.
It takes a lot of guts to stand up to the Tidal Wave of liars and dopes.
Alan,
Thank you for a well-considered report on the status at EPA. As you’ve pointed out the “finding’s” foundation rests on IPCC which draws heavily on CRU and affiliated studies that appear to have been doctored. A good legal team will be able to demonstrate the shaky foundation the finding rests upon and argue it is far from the proof needed for costly regulation.
I would not be surprised in light of the fast moving Climategate revelations, to see all three of your skeptic options undertaken. It is also likely that as the taint of political scandal grows around CRU and the AGW premise, politicians and prudent agencies will want to distance themselves from the fallout. There could be no greater PR disaster than being saddled with enforcing a regulation widely viewed as corrupt.
Thank you for your service to your country sir.
Thank you Mr Carlin, huge respect for you.
It may be useful to draw a distinction between the hypothesis of catastrophic global warming owing to CO2 from the hypothesis that the earth’s ozone layer would be eroded away by chloro-fluro-carbons (CFCs).
The CFC story was more amenable to political use for the simple reason that another chemical could be adopted to replace CFCs. This may have cost some moola, but would also not have been hugely expensive either. Once CFCs are banned, no manufacturer has an economic reason to defend them any more. Thus, it was politically easy to take out CFCs and then spread this internationally via the UN and the Montreal Protocol. In political terms, its a conveniently tidy narrative.
One practical problem for those who try to profit from attacking combustion of hydrocarbons yielding CO2 is that electricity is useful and society cannot readily swap it for something else, as with CFCs. Changing the global energy market is enormously costly. This is tempting for chaps like Gore looking to make money for themselves and friends by attacking energy suppliers by claiming they are going to destroy the earth.
But since the earth is NOT going to heat up owing to CO2 levels, the inconvenient truth is the entire plan of attack is ultimately doomed, in political terms. In the long run, claiming CO2 drives global warming has to be revealed to be absurd. Its just a matter of when this will be revealed, not if it will be revealed.
For the farce of CO2 driven Global Warming to have gotten as far as it did must be testimony to:
– abundant funding giving researchers incentive to find something notable lest their efforts be proven to be unimportant
– disparagement of normal skepticism
– using corruption of peer review to exclude balanced views
– the intrinsic weakness of some human beings, even well educated ones like climate scientists, to distort science so as to serve an agenda of their political favorites and to win personal gains
– absolute power corrupts absolutely. Some climate scientists thought they could get away witth twisting data and it would never become known.
However, the point of this post is that their success was ultimately impossible and their scams would ultimately have to come out.
This explains the efforts to “rebrand” the cause. It moved from catastrophic warming to merely the unproveable meaningless idea of “climate change.” And now some are trying to re-invent it further into energy self-sufficiency, toward which the public is reasonably more sympathetic.
Many environmental issues have often rested on political control of the media or biased organizations, like UNEP. In the case of global warming, what has been new in its startling scope, is that the cooking of science enabled control to extend and infect the National Academy of Sciences and leading scientific journals, leading many educated people to assume there was something genuine underlying the Global Warming, science is over, allegations.
Mr Carlin, thank you for you post on this subject.
I don’t believe that the scams are running this EPA effort because, as Jumbo above points out, te scam will eventually be found out and a huge backlash will insue — unless the Governmental structure has changed so much that the backlash won’t matter. The watermelon analogy has a ‘red’ center – and this is the Marxists best chance to take over – through Governmental regulatioin, control of our industries and commerce.
For some reason, Congress has ceded its legislative duties to Administrative agencies. But they could fight back by eliminating the EPA, which has clearly outlived its usefulness.
I’ve been looking all over for this!
Thanks.
I wish I would have found your site a long time ago. I found you on Google. Thanks for the great post!
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What’s the difference between today’s global-warming models and medieval astrology? Answer: We know which astrological models were correct. That’s the conclusion of scientist Kanya Kusano in a January report published by the Japan Society of Energy and Resources, an Osaka-based professional scientific association. The paper, recently translated into English by British technology news Web site the Register, argues that medieval astrologers confirmed their theories by testing their predictions against celestial events that actually unfolded. Similarly, today’s climate science is so complex that only time — and a lot more observation — will tell whether what scientists think they know is really correct. Until then, the alarmist findings by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are “an unprovable hypothesis,” Mr. Kusano argues. Two of his colleagues on the five-member panel agree.
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