The US government gave the energy industry a big victory yesterday by relaxing the air pollution rules for coal-burning power stations and oil refineries.
Democrat politicians and environmentalists condemned it as a huge step backwards in the battle against global warming.
The environmental protection agency's long-awaited recommendations - the object of years of intense lobbying by the US power industry - give electricity producers greater flexibility in expanding their output without having to install additional emission controls.
Its administrator, Christie Todd Whitman, said the reforms were "common sense", and would reduce pollution by increasing efficiency. The US is by far the biggest emitter of fossil fuel gases in the world.
The industry has argued for years that regulations inhibited the expansion energy production, a position boosted last year when Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy taskforce recommended that the rules should be re-examined.
"The need for reform is clear and has broad-based support," Ms Whitman said. "Our common commitment to environmental protection need not be an obstacle to having the most modern and efficient energy infrastructure in the world."
The EPA plans will raise the threshold of expansion that must be reached before power plants are required to introduce additional controls on smog, soot and acid rain.
The utilities will also be allowed to choose to use the pollution levels from any 24-month period in the last 10 years to set the baseline above which that threshold will be set.
And the currently vague definition of "routine repairs", which do not require additional controls, is to be clarified in ways which campaigners fear will define almost any modification as "routine".
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, argued that the new rules would reduce pollution. "Many of these people who are affected have chosen to leave in place old equipment, which pollutes more, rather than replace it and modernise it, which pollutes less," he said.
But environmentalists said the measures would produce millions of tons of additional pollution from older, dirtier coal-burning plants: amounting to a dilution of the Clean Air Act.
The US has been condemned for refusing to sign the Kyoto protocol, which would force it to reduce carbon emissions.
"The Bush administration appears determined to be the most anti-environmental force our nation has ever endured," said Mark Helm of Friends of the Earth USA.
"There is an undisputed link between air pollution and premature death. We're moving in the [wrong] direction."
Buck Parker, of the Californian group Earthjustice, said the government had "dropped a dirty bomb, and it's going to cost thousands of American lives."
Their concern was echoed by the Democratic leader of the Senate, Tom Daschle, who said he was "very, very saddened by the news again today, that once again clean air takes a back seat to the polluters and the special interests that seem to have such power in this administration."
Democrat politicians and environmentalists condemned it as a huge step backwards in the battle against global warming.
The environmental protection agency's long-awaited recommendations - the object of years of intense lobbying by the US power industry - give electricity producers greater flexibility in expanding their output without having to install additional emission controls.
Its administrator, Christie Todd Whitman, said the reforms were "common sense", and would reduce pollution by increasing efficiency. The US is by far the biggest emitter of fossil fuel gases in the world.
The industry has argued for years that regulations inhibited the expansion energy production, a position boosted last year when Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy taskforce recommended that the rules should be re-examined.
"The need for reform is clear and has broad-based support," Ms Whitman said. "Our common commitment to environmental protection need not be an obstacle to having the most modern and efficient energy infrastructure in the world."
The EPA plans will raise the threshold of expansion that must be reached before power plants are required to introduce additional controls on smog, soot and acid rain.
The utilities will also be allowed to choose to use the pollution levels from any 24-month period in the last 10 years to set the baseline above which that threshold will be set.
And the currently vague definition of "routine repairs", which do not require additional controls, is to be clarified in ways which campaigners fear will define almost any modification as "routine".
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, argued that the new rules would reduce pollution. "Many of these people who are affected have chosen to leave in place old equipment, which pollutes more, rather than replace it and modernise it, which pollutes less," he said.
But environmentalists said the measures would produce millions of tons of additional pollution from older, dirtier coal-burning plants: amounting to a dilution of the Clean Air Act.
The US has been condemned for refusing to sign the Kyoto protocol, which would force it to reduce carbon emissions.
"The Bush administration appears determined to be the most anti-environmental force our nation has ever endured," said Mark Helm of Friends of the Earth USA.
"There is an undisputed link between air pollution and premature death. We're moving in the [wrong] direction."
Buck Parker, of the Californian group Earthjustice, said the government had "dropped a dirty bomb, and it's going to cost thousands of American lives."
Their concern was echoed by the Democratic leader of the Senate, Tom Daschle, who said he was "very, very saddened by the news again today, that once again clean air takes a back seat to the polluters and the special interests that seem to have such power in this administration."
No comments:
Post a Comment