EPA ruling still leaves nation at Bush’s mercy

As long as G.W. Bush is in the White House, there can be no hope for progess, no hope for enlightenment, no hope for decency. Bush uses his bully pulpit for reaction, not advancement, for the worst rather than the best.

Although the environmentalists are rejoicing over their victory in the Supreme Court last week, the nation is still at the mercy of a man who is better suited to rule a 14^th century kingdom.

Bush, finally admitting that there is global warming after six years of denial, now calls it “a serious problem.” But he insists that efforts to curb heat-trapping emissions must not cut into economic growth.

Besides, he says in a magnificent non sequitur, the United States can do little about greenhouse gases until China and India do. Pollution is horrible in big cites of China and India. But to suggest that America should do nothing until Asian powerhouses do is a lame excuse.

Barbara Boxer, head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, says as much: “The president still doesn’t get it. I find it offensive that the president is still using China as an excuse to do nothing.”

True. But Bush does not want to get it. Holding down business costs is all that matters to him. He sides with automakers and power-generator polluters. Threats to the planet do not matter to him. Predictions that one-third of animal and plant species will become extinct in 2050 mean nothing to him.

Rising sea levels mean nothing to him. Beach erosions and coral bleaching means nothing to him. The rise of global temperatures means nothing to him. Vanishing glaciers and melting snow on mountain tops means nothing to him. Drought, heat waves, disease, and food and water shortages mean nothing to him. Visions of an apocalyptic future means nothing to him.

His obtuseness in the face of facts is incredible but hardly surprising. His minions have stifled, delayed or downplayed any climate change research that does not support retrograde Bush policies.

When the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in favor of the Indians in a land removal case, President Andrew Jackson supposedly said: “Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.”

The court is powerless to enforce its rulings if the executive does nothing. In that case, such rulings amount to little more than a rebuke.

Nevertheless, the court declaration that the Environmenal Protection Agency is required by the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and smokestacks is a vigorous reminder that Bush is president not monarch.

Justice Stevens, writing for the majority in the 5-4 ruling, said the EPA has offered “a laundry list of reasons not to regulate” but none of them is valid.

The EPA reversed the wise policies instituted by Carol Browner, EPA chief under President Clinton. The Republican EPA inaction is a clear danger to public health and welfare.

As many liberal Supreme Court watchers had hoped, conservative Justice Kennedy is taking the pivotal role that retired conservative Justice O’Connor played. Kennedy, as O’Connor had, refuses to let the reactionaries take absolute control.

The spearhead of the reactionaries, Chief Justice Roberts, said in his dissent that the case was nonjusticiable. Retrograde Justice Scalia agreed. “This court has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the (EPA).”

This is the same Scalia who made up the Retrograde Five that substituted its judgment for the law to make Bush president in 2000. Moreover, the EPA judgment, like most of the Bush administration judgments, was ideological rather than reasoned.

The Earthjustice organization of lawyers took out a fullpage ad in the New York Times calling the EPA decision a landmark. It said: “This ruling signals a sea change in environmental protection. And it marks the latest in a string of recent court victories that Earthjustice lawyers are helping to win.

“In West Virginia on March 23, a federal judge ruled that mountaintop removal mining violates the Clean Water Act. In San Francisco on March 30, a federal judge overturned an administration attempt to cut the public out of logging decisions in national forests. In Alaska on March 17, a federal court set a national precedent by stopping a gold mine from destroying a lake and gutting 30 years of clean water protection.”

Fine. But optimism is unwarranted. Bush has led the nation into hell. Americans have no hope until noon of Jan. 20, 2009.