ALSO VISIT

The New York Times today featured a front page account of new rules changes at the Environmental Protection Agency. The rules changes, in line with current administration energy policies, will effectively end investigations into Clean Air Act violations at 50 power plants across the United States. The reported rules change would allow energy producers and refineries to upgrade their plants, even where it increases harmful emissions, without installing any pollution controls at all. The Times also reports that a "career E.P.A. enforcement lawyer" said the move was unprecedented and characterized the process as a decision "not… to enforce the law at all."

The changes are said to have emerged from suggestions made by Vice President Dick Cheney's "energy task force", the composition of which was shrouded in so much secrecy. The option remains for the Justice Department to file suit against the alleged polluters, within the context of which federal judges would decide whether the rules of the present or at the time of violations would apply, the standard being to enforce law as written. There is widespread concern, however, that all such cases will be hampered by what may be interpreted as de facto legal precedent in executive enforcement rule-making. The changes take effect in 12 states in December. The 38 states who control their own enforcement of such laws will have 3 years to decide whether to implement the new enforcement standards.

The context and the consequence of these actions involve a struggle for political conceptualization of both responsibility and security. Environmental groups, whose position has been consistently supported by the majority of the public, have long argued that polluters have an inherent responsibility, as a condition of their business privilege, to ensure that their activities cause as little harm as possible to the environment and to public health. Pro-business energy interests, along with a certain breed of politician, have consistently opposed the enforcement of rules that ensure such accountability, on the grounds that the public service delivered by such enterprises far outweighs the environmental and health costs of laissez-faire energy and chemical production.

While the traditional economic categorization of energy utilities holds that the public is not in fact free to opt out of such basic conveniences (in which case "market conditions" do not in fact apply), proponents of laissez-faire maintain that the market always adjusts to public sentiment, even when the public is not free to effect change by refusing consumption.

In the area of security, environmental research indicates that economic and political stability are closely tied to ecological stability. Environmental breakdown can contribute to hunger, poverty, and political imbalance, which is thought able to destabilize weak governments in developing countries, especially where tribal or sectarian interests predominate in the socio-political culture. Proponents of laissez-faire, however, argue that national security itself is dependent upon allowing producers and suppliers to function with as little expense as possible, so that escalating costs abroad don't affect domestic economic stability.

Both sides seem to agree that there are serious problems with dependency on regimes whose political standards for justice and representative government do not match those of developed democracies. Ecological science would seem to indicate that there is a responsibility for all affluent societies to promote and to pioneer the move toward renewable energy technologies and sustainable development. It is unclear why EPA policy does not currently embrace the science of the field which informs its enforcement, which leads critics to cite political and ideological motivations, without reference to sound science or public demand for accountability. [s]

STORY UPDATE:
CLEAN AIR ACT ENFORCEMENT CHANGES HALTED
24 December 2003