Friday, 04 Mar 2005

Bush Sticks Johnson in the EPA

President Bush announces nominee to head EPA

Today President Bush announced his new pick to lead the U.S. EPA: Steve Johnson, who's been the agency's temporary head since Mike Leavitt left six weeks ago to head the Department of Health and Human Services. If confirmed by the Senate, Johnson, a 24-year EPA veteran, will be the first professional scientist to hold the position. The choice of Johnson, a low-key, wonky agency vet whose work has focused on pesticides, may signal a new approach from the White House; Bush's previous EPA administrators, Christie Whitman and Mike Leavitt, were both significant players in the Republican Party (and one of them still is!). Johnson will preside over some tough battles, including a contentious one now under way about how to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, was fairly beside himself with enthusiasm, calling Johnson "the best we could expect as a nominee from the Bush administration."


Bill Bryson has made a name for himself as a best-selling travel writer, but readers of his books should beware: they may be unwittingly exposed to a potent environmental message. Throughout his wry commentaries on landscapes, cultures, history, and science, Bryson subtly weaves an environmental ethic, in one book poking fun at American overconsumption, in others lamenting the disappearance of odd species. Sarah van Schagen writes that Bryson's light touch might be just what enviros, currently obsessing over framing and communication, need -- in Books Unbound, today on the Grist Magazine website.

Hazy Delays of Winter

Clear Skies bill still bottled up in Senate committee

Help -- Clear Skies has fallen, and it can't get up! President Bush's "Clear Skies" legislation is stuck in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.) has delayed a vote on the bill three times, most recently yesterday, each time realizing that it's still deadlocked at a 9-9 split. The vote has now been rescheduled for March 9; an Inhofe spokesflack said that it has to happen by March 15 or the bill is likely toast for this year. As the bill's prospects look more and more, uh, cloudy, the Bushies are gearing up to try to replicate its effects through executive rulemaking and regulatory maneuvers (ah, democracy). Mercury regulations that enviros have been so vocal in criticizing can get done that way, as can the market-based incentives to reduce smog and acid rain-forming emissions, which just about everybody supports. However, without congressional approval, the administration can't take the controversial step of rolling back new-source review rules that require power plants to install new pollution-control equipment.


Claiming that environmentalism is dead leads to a lucrative speaking schedule, it turns out. Two of The Reapers turned up at a panel discussion in San Francisco this week, and representatives of the environmental-justice organization Asian Pacific Environmental Network were there to send us a dispatch about the happs. Vivian Chang and Manami Kano write that while there seems to be growing agreement that the green movement is in trouble, the proposed solutions still lack a thoughtful analysis of class and race. Read about efforts to get EJ into the discussion -- in Dispatches, today on the Grist Magazine website.

Looking for Some Good Cowboys

Blair bypasses Bush, appeals to Texas for global-warming aid

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's quixotic mission to convert the Bush administration from staunch believers in "more research" on global warming to actual movers on the issue has thus far proved unsuccessful. So Blair is diversifying his strategy. One tactic is to bypass the decision maker in chief and play ball with lower-level operatives, among them the oil big-wigs in President Bush's home state. (British representatives are also chatting up members of Congress, state officials, and enviro groups.) Blair's hope is that there will be a trickle-down effect if U.S. energy companies -- starting with ChevronTexaco Corp. and Apache Corp. -- come around to the notion that developing cleaner technologies and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is in their best economic interest. Says Judith Slater, the British consul general in Houston, "We can't expect them to do this for the greater good of mankind." Sigh.