The EPA said last week it would improve air quality by cutting ground-level ozone limits from 80 parts per billion to 75 ppb. This should save thousands of lives a year. Sounds good? Well, according to New Scientist, the EPA’s own scientific advisers told the agency last year of overwhelming evidence that an even tighter limit of 70 ppb would save thousands more lives. No go, said the EPA, apparently deciding those other thousands of lives are inconsequential.
Now the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says the Bush administration wants to overhaul the whole process of setting air-quality controls by allowing political appointees to help draft advisory reports, taking the job away, at least in part, from researchers. New Scientist reports the words of Tim Donaghy of the UCS: “The administration has changed the rules along the way so that when the next administration gets into office, the role science plays in setting regulations will be greatly diminished.”
This, by the way, dovetails with a call last month by the UCS for the next president and Congress to end political interference in science and establish conditions allowing federal science to flourish. “Good federal policy depends upon reliable and robust scientific work,” said Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at UCS. “When science is falsified, fabricated or censored, Americans’ health and safety suffer.”
Well, more than Americans are going to suffer from Bush’s bankrupt intellectual legacy for centuries to come. All thanks to the staggering ineptitude of a president who got into office by appointment, and further evidence of why political appointee it too often a euphemism for incompetent.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
