Not since the Reagan administration, while trying to cheap out on school lunch funding, decided to designate ketchup a vegetable has America been treated to a more ridiculous morsel of spin than White House spokesman Scott McClellan dished out Tuesday.
Of President Bush's decision to reverse his campaign pledge to seek limits on carbon dioxide emissions, McClellan tried this out on the press corps:
Carbon dioxide, he said, ``should not have been included as a pollutant'' in Bush's campaign position for reducing four chemical products in coal-fired power plant emissions, because carbon dioxide is not classified as a pollutant in the U.S. Clean Air Act.
The McClellan version lasted only one news cycle because the Bush White House is smart about its message management. It quickly decided to call a flip-flop what it is. The president himself came out Wednesday, citing immediate economic necessity for the reversal.
The reason the Clean Air Act doesn't list CO2 as a pollutant, as anybody who has taken basic biology knows, is that carbon dioxide is not toxic to humans as are other emissions -- such as mercury -- from power plants. As anybody who has taken the Bio I course also knows, the burning of fossil fuels has greatly accelerated the amount of carbon dioxide emissions in industrialized countries such as ours. Those emissions contribute to the heat-trapping that is causing historically rapid global warming.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, whose chief, Christine Todd Whitman, was run over by the Bush decision, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased almost 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuels that are burned to run cars and trucks, to heat homes and businesses and to power factories produce about 98 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.
In 1997, the United States emitted about one-fifth of total global greenhouse gases.
By Wednesday, Bush's reversal on carbon dioxide limits was creating a sufficient uproar that the president spoke directly to his decision. He said short-term cheap is more important than long-term global warming abatement. Bush said electricity costs would go even higher -- especially in the West -- if power plants had to deal with CO2 emissions limits as were proposed in federal legislation introduced on Thursday. Withdrawal of Bush's support is a huge blow. And the president's candor is far more alarming than the spin doctor's disregard for our intelligence.
Accepting the president's explanation demonstrates why the United States has such trouble living up to its commitments to reduce greenhouse gas levels to something that will avert the environmental catastrophes of global warming.
Of course, critics who say Bush reversed his position because of pressure from his buddies in coal, oil and gas may have insight. There also could have been a touch of expediency in outdoing Al Gore on the CO2 issue last fall, with no intention to follow through as president. Bush was seeking votes, and digging into environmentalist Gore's base was good strategy.
But let's say the president is truthful now: He jettisoned stated commitment to reducing CO2 emissions from power plants because the costs to the power industries would make electricity shortages worse and damage the economy.
The calculation is classic Americana. We put guys with MBAs in charge of government decision-making and they do risk analysis for the future of the planet the same way they did risk analysis when they were running a company whose goal is to make a profit. The future consists of this quarter. The constituency that counts is the stockholders. Money is the universe of discourse.
Bush said Wednesday -- again -- that the United States is experiencing an energy crisis. So how did we get in such dire shape? With short-term thinking and public policies that reward consumption, and defer serious engagement on large, complex environmental challenges. By not taking personal responsibility to turn off unused lights, and driving gas-hog vehicles with lax emissions standards. By punishing elected officials who do try to rise above immediate expedience. By not punishing elected officials who don't.
The short-term thinking about carbon dioxide limits is a naturally occurring phenomenon in the political climate we have not only allowed, but enabled.
© 2001 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press
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