Waking up to this morning's papers, I can't decide if it's worse to be someone who has to breathe or worse to be a spokesperson. I suppose I do both.
I usually don't blog about the environment. I leave that up to our Green Team and the incredibly whip-smart head of our Green Project, Michael Moynihan. You can read his much more technical and interesting blog posts here.
But, hey, I take my own bags to the grocery and recycle roughly the equivalent of a K2-sized mountain of Diet Coke cans (OK, and a few wine bottles) each week. So I have the street creds to write this blog.
So, down to the business at hand. Let me get this straight, because it's not easy. According to an article by the Washington Post's super sharp Juliet Eilperin (who has the somewhat crazy job of covering the weird, parallel universe beats of the envrionment and U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential bid), the U.S. EPA was ordered sometime last year by the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS, if you want to be really hip) to determine whether greenhouse gases were bad. Duh. EPA at first issued a report from its scientists and staff, saying, yeah, they're pretty bad. They hurt humans who breathe the air (like, all of us) and contribute to global warming, also bad. But wait. President Bush, the consumate oil man, got other federal agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture (who knew USDA was such a bully?) to gang up on EPA and say that Western civilization as we know it would end if EPA did anything to help us breathe easier under the Clean Air Act. Best to punt to Congress, which recently failed itself to do anything. And in another bizarre twist, the EPA decided that although it announced its own findings were DOA the day they were announced, they would open up the proposal for public comment. WHAT? WHY BOTHER? That's like getting people to sign a guest book at a wedding then tossing it before the end of the reception.
So, is it worse to be human and have to breathe or worse to be a press secretary when you have to lie through your teeth? Which is exactly what White House flak Dana Perino did yesterday when she said acting on greenhouse gases and global warming would cause gas prices and home heating costs to go up. You go, girl. Play on those fears of the average family when you get paid a zillion dollars a year to spin away. Oh, but wait. She said we should we should invest in alternative fuels. I suppose she means drilling in ANWR, which would provide enough oil to keep us going for about a nanosecond.
But there is hope. NDN and the Green Project ACTUALLY do believe in exploring different ways to reduce pollution and increase output from alternative energy sources. That's why we are hosting a lunch next week with the head of our Globalization Initiative, Dr. Rob Shapiro, who has co-authored a thought provoking paper on a carbon tax that would reduce the payroll tax. That's why Michael is hard at work on what promises to be a compelling paper on why extending the solar tax credit is a legisative no-brainer and that's why we were thrilled earlier this week when U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, spoke to the NDN Community. You can read his very insightful comments here.
And to conclude (while I can still draw enough breath to type), a separate front-page article in the Washington Post had more bad news for those of us who can't hold our breath until we die. A federal appeals courth has thrown out a Bush Administration effort to reduce unhealthy levels of soot and smog (read: black junk in the air that coats your lungs) because the court said EPA had overstepped its bounds. Call me zany, but if EPA itsn't supposed to reduce black crud in the air, what is it supposed to do?
So, in sum, we have the White House reject policy in favor of politics. The losers: humans who breathe. We have a White House press secretary who added considerable amounts of her own hot air into the atmosphere (bad). The losers: humans who breathe. And to top off this stellar day, we have a federal appeals court who thinks the EPA shouldn't do anything more than give awards to 5th graders who win the local science fair. The losers: humans who breathe.
As a human being and press secretary, I am ashamed. I have to go now. I'm feeling a little short of breath.
