Obama administration retreats from environmental regulations

[budkin]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot Moderator Democratic Underground)

Yet another cave to the GOP... this is just getting more sickening every episode. Now Obama has the Oil and Gas companies actually praising him.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/science/earth/10epa.html?_r=1&hp


The Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers — as it adjusts to a changed political dynamic in Washington with a more muscular Republican opposition.

The move to delay the rules, announced this week by the Environmental Protection Agency, will leave in place policies set by President George W. Bush. President Obama ran for office promising tougher standards, and the new rules were set to take effect over the next several weeks.

Now, the agency says, it needs until July 2011 to further analyze scientific and health studies of the smog rules and until April 2012 on the boiler regulation. Mr. Obama, having just cut a painful deal with Republicans intended to stimulate the economy, can ill afford to be seen as simultaneously throttling the fragile recovery by imposing a sheaf of expensive new environmental regulations that critics say will cost jobs.

The delays represent a marked departure from the first two years of the Obama presidency, when the E.P.A. moved quickly to reverse one Bush environmental policy after another. Administration officials now face the question of whether in their zeal to undo the Bush agenda they reached too far and provoked an unmanageable political backlash.

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[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[villager]

2. Well, of course. Environmental betrayals were some of the earliest auguries

...about where this administration was actually headed....

[RiverStone]

3. I thought the Obama era was supposed to be a positive change for the environment!

It seems the grey area that separates our president's policies from the pukes grows thinner every day. On creating legislation for the earth, Obama lacks the enthusiasm (see Al Gore) that a world leader should have.

More compromise....

I'm telling ya, there will be challenge from within the Dem base on 2012.

[displacedvermoter]

4. Add it to the list of achievements!

[ProSense]

5. This seems like a significant points

The E.P.A. has said that it will begin regulating carbon emissions from power plants and other major stationary sources on Jan. 2, as a prelude to broader regulation of carbon dioxide in future years. Delaying that program would undercut much of what officials are trying to do in international negotiations like the United Nations climate talks now under way in Cancún, Mexico.

<...>

Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, described the rules delay as a technical and tactical decision. She said she was delaying them for a matter of months merely to get “further interpretation” of scientific and health studies of their effects. An agency official said the delays were not a response to Congressional threats to curb the agency’s power or cut its budget.

Retreats isn't the same as delay.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[polichick]

7. +1

[displacedvermoter]

9. A very little sorta...

[ProSense]

8. Thanks

for your concern.

EPA says environmentalists are overreacting to delays in new air rules

<...>

“These announcements have nothing to do with each other or with the other rules we've announced in the past, or will announce in the future, to protect Americans' health,” Gilfillan said in an e-mail to The Hill. “No one should read anything more into this than the fact that we're doing what we've said we'd do all along: following the best science and the law.”

<...>

[Catherina]

12. Well said. n/t

[arcane1]

10. “further interpretation” of scientific and health studies of their effects.

at which time, it will be interpreted that the health effects are insignificant thus no need for the regulations.

You heard it here!

[Milo_Bloom]

11. Why worry, Obama has fought hard for us up until now...

:sarcasm:

[Supersedeas]

13. nice catch....let's wait and see