SHIFTY EPA WORSENS POLLUTION WITH JUNK SCIENCE

And loads people with big prices for motor fuel too!

After more than four years of stalling tactics by the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal appellate court just might finally consider the matter of whether the agency used junk science to force both gas prices and smog levels higher. I say "just might" because it looks like the court is about to sweep the matter under the rug in favor of the EPA. On Feb. 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is scheduled to hear arguments in National Alternative Fuels Association (NAFA) vs. EPA. The lawsuit centers around EPA regulations issued in 2000 mandating lower levels of ground-level ozone in urban areas by reducing the amount of sulfur in gasoline, called the "Tier 2 standards."

By way of background, the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 directed the EPA to issue regulations reducing emissions from motor vehicles, including those contributing to ozone such as volatile organic hydrocarbons (VOCs) and nitrogen oxide (NOx). These standards resulted in reformulated gasoline, which has been in the market place for some time.

The law also directed the EPA to study whether further emission reductions would be required following implementation of the reformulated gasoline rules. This study was then used by the EPA to justify issuing the "Tier 2" standards -- here's where the controversy begins. The EPA claimed that, unless low-sulfur gasoline was mandated nationwide, the emissions reduction accomplished under the Tier 2 rules might be nullified -- citing auto makers' dubious concerns that conventional gasoline might harm the new emissions control equipment required by the rules.

This claim was tested and validated in its study, according to the EPA. According to NAFA's lawsuit, however, a report prepared for NAFA by an independent emissions testing laboratory indicates the EPA rigged the test to achieve a pre-ordained result. "It was concluded that [the] methodology used by EPA was faulty and that the data used did not support the conclusion that emissions from Tier 2 vehicles [caused harm to emissions equipment]. Emissions data from only four vehicles were used... an SUV, a pickup and two minivans.. The SUV [vehicle] emissions were weighted to represent 2/3 of the final estimate.," concluded the laboratory. Adding insult to injury, the EPA's tests were then introduced into the public rulemaking record after it was too late for the public to comment on them, according to the NAFA lawsuit.

Four years later, the public may now be paying a real price both in terms of higher gas costs and increased pollution as a result of the EPA's actions. When asked about rising gas prices in an August 2004 interview on National Public Radio, economist Philip Verleger of the Institute for International Economics attributed the $0.50 increase occurring between March-July on the EPA's low sulfur regulations and limitations on gasoline refinery capacity.

NAFA estimates the costs of the low sulfur rules are in the $0.20-0.25 range. But the ultimate irony -- as pointed out by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Dr. Kay Jones in 1999 using the EPA's own data -- is that the agency's Tier 2 rules may actually worsen air pollution. Although the EPA characterizes NOx as a precursor to ozone, NOx reductions can actually increase or decrease ozone concentrations depending on the locations and emission rates of NOx and other air pollutants, says Dr. Jones, citing work done by the National Academy of Sciences. "Smog in many urban areas increases when NOx concentrations are further reduced, while declines generally occur in less heavily populated downwind areas," says Dr. Jones. His prediction has come true according to some leading atmospheric scientists -- NOx reductions may, in fact, be increasing urban ozone levels around the country.

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A PREMATURE DEATH SENTENCE

Good to see some self-doubts among the Greenies but environmentalism is rooted in hatred of other people so it is not going to go away any time soon. All the wars mankind has had should tell us plenty about human hatreds for one-another

The leaders of the environmental movement were livid last fall when Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, two little-known, earnest environmentalists in their 30's, presented a 12,000-word thesis arguing that environmentalism was dead. It did not help that the pair first distributed their paper, "The Death of Environmentalism," at the annual meeting of deep-pocketed foundation executives who underwrite the environmental establishment. But few outside the movement's inner councils paid much attention at first.

Then came the November election, into which groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters poured at least $15 million, much of it to defeat President Bush, whose support for oil drilling and logging, and opposition to regulating greenhouse gases have made him anathema to environmental groups. Instead, Mr. Bush and Congressional champions of his agenda cemented their control in Washington at a time when battles loom over clean air and oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Now a debate about the future of environmentalism is ricocheting around the Internet about the authors' notion of, in Mr. Shellenberger's words, "abolishing the category" of environmentalism and embracing a wider spectrum of liberal issues to "release the power of progressivism." Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, began things in the fall with a bristling 6,000-word denunciation of Mr. Shellenberger's and Mr. Nordhaus's paper. An online magazine, Grist.org, has started a forum to debate their ideas and their assertions that environmentalism has become "just another special interest."

One writer called the paper "ridiculous and self-serving." Another wrote simply, "I'm not dead." Others have embraced the paper. "The article articulates exactly my feelings about the environmental movement," one enthusiast wrote.

Mr. Nordhaus, 38, is a pollster, and Mr. Shellenberger, 33, is a strategist and the executive director of the Breakthrough Institute, a new organization that advocates putting progressive values to work to solve problems. They are receiving an increasing number of speaking invitations like the one that brought them here to Middlebury College in central Vermont recently, where they spoke at a conference on rethinking the politics of climate.

The election results may not have been the only reason they have struck a nerve. Other nagging concerns abound, like worries about the effect of repeated defeats on morale and concerns about image; a recent survey conducted for the Nature Conservancy suggested that the group use the term "conservationist" rather than "environmentalist." .... "To a large extent, most of us in the environmental movement think most people agree with us," said Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author of "The End of Nature," a 1989 book on global warming. But Mr. McKibben, who called Mr. Shellenberger and Mr. Nordhaus "the bad boys of American environmentalism," said their data showed that the kind of political support the movement had in the late 1970's had come and gone. "The political ecosystem is as real as the physical ecosystem so we might as well deal with it," he said.

Their paper asserts that the movement's senior leadership was blinded by its early successes and has become short-sighted and "just another special interest." Its gloomy warnings and geeky, technocentric policy prescriptions are profoundly out of step with the electorate, Mr. Shellenberger and Mr. Nordhaus say. "We have become convinced that modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, outdated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live," they wrote. As proof, they cite the debate on global warming and the largely unsuccessful push for federal regulation of industrial and automobile emissions.

They avoided making tactical prescriptions, but they did chide the movement for its limited efforts to find common ground with other groups, like labor and urged their compatriots to tap into the country's optimism. Mr. Nordhaus, who works at Evans/McDonough, an opinion research company, told the student-dominated conference at Middlebury College that environmentalists "have spent the last 25 or 30 years telling people what they cannot aspire to." Given the can-do spirit of the country, "that isn't going to get you very far," he said.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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