EPA Global Warming Report Violates White House Agreement To Settle Lawsuit

Competitive Enterprise Institute ^ | June 3, 2002 | CEI Staff

[ZGuy]

Report Relying On Discredited Science Previously Disavowed As Official Policy

Washington, D.C.,

The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest report on global warming to the United Nations, Climate Action Report 2002, violates an agreement between the White House and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, three members of Congress, and other non-profit advocacy groups, struck in settlement of a lawsuit. The report relies in part on the discredited National Assessment on Climate Change.

As a result of the lawsuit filed in October 2000, the Bush Administration ultimately agreed in September 2001 to withdraw the National Assessment and stated that its unlawfully produced conclusions are “not policy positions or official statements of the U.S. government.” EPA has ignored this agreement in issuing its report to the United Nations.

“Through Freedom of Information Act inquiries, we learned that the National Assessment was hurriedly slapped together in an incomplete and inaccurate form,” said Christopher C. Horner, CEI counsel who filed the lawsuit. “The current Climate Action Report inappropriately cites the disgraced National Assessment, in clear violation of the spirit and letter of our agreement with the White House in return for withdrawing our suit.”

Adds Myron Ebell, director of global warming policy at CEI: “The Administration has recognized that the National Assessment is the worst sort of junk science. For the EPA now to accept the National Assessment’s findings as valid undermines and contradicts President Bush’s global warming policies. The EPA needs to be told that the Clinton Administration is gone and Al Gore did not win the election.”

The lawsuit against the White House’s flawed climate science was brought jointly by CEI, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Representatives Joe Knollenberg (R-MI) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), and other non-profit advocacy groups. CEI’s pleadings in the case can be found in the docket at the federal District Court for the District of Columbia (CV 00-02383).

[justshutupandtakeit]

Somehow during the last 3 decades you managed to miss the point of Civil Service reforms which occurred over the last hundred years.

Politicizing the bureaucracy is no way to improve accountability which apparently is what you seek. It works the other way. It would increase dead wood and reduce the ability to fire for other than political reasons.

[madfly]

BTTT

[alaskanfan]

Bingo!!!!

What Should be Done?

Emissions trading proposed by the Administration is simply a "hidden" tax that ultimately falls on the consumer and discourages spending. Each consumer is impoverished a small amount while emissions are forcibly reduced.

Is this what we really want? I think not. Rather, it might be wiser to allow people to keep their money. Many will invest their funds in technologies that will produce substantial energy at reduced cost. Some of these will produce few if any greenhouse emissions.

The lessons of technological history are clear. Each century brings about changes that are simply unanticipated but revolutionary. 100 years ago, senior scientists and public officials worried that America would be deforested by the 1920s and that disease would be rampant in urban areas because of the alarming increase in horse traffic. Amidst all this concern, the automobile and the fossil fuel-powered economy were soon to appear. Its development was driven less by concern for the environment than it was by the profit motive. Those who saw this opportunity did well. If there was a substantial horse tax, there would have been less to invest.

A similar argument could be made for nearly 200 years ago. In the early years of the 19th century, the U.S. government fretted over nascent Manifest Destiny. If it had gathered a team of "top scientists" to recommend how to move goods and people across this vast nation, they would doubtless recommended a substantial and very expensive network of barge canals. Fortunately, there was no massive tax levied to make this happen. But if there were, it would have taken place just as the steam engine and fixed rail transit were being invented.

As we debate this issue and what to do, there are probably 10,000 people tinkering and thinking about fuel cells, hydrogen power, and undreamed-of exotica that will displace our current energy system. Let’s save our citizens’ money. Let’s allow them to invest in the future, take the risks and reap the rewards. Better to do that than tax them to solve a problem that is not all that emergent, and one that will nonetheless resolve itself faster if only we would get out of the way.

Testimony of Patrick J. Michaels
Professor of Environmental Sciences University of Virginia
And Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute
before the
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Science
United States House of Representatives

November 6, 1997

Why spend taxpayers dollars to combat a non-existent problem? IMO The only answer is job security.