From today's New York Times, and article headlined "White House Refused to Open Pollutants Email":
The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.
When asked whether this wasn't maybe a little immature, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said "Nunh-uh!" After trading "Is not!" "Is too!" statements with Helen Thomas for a while, Fratto covered his ears and ran from the room yelling "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!!!!"
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino came in a minute later and said "Are you happy now? You made Tony cry! You big bullies!!"
Is it November yet?
Seriously, the the thing I'm most looking forward to about the upcoming Presidential election is not the chance to implement a saner Middle East policy, or restore our standing with the rest of the world, or even to restore a few of the Constitutional protections that have been stripped away over the past eight years. Those would all be nice, but I'll be happy just to install an administration with an average emotional age greater than eight.
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Over at Making Light, Patrick has the same reaction, and quotes the Flash Girls song that this made me think of.
Posted by: Chad Orzel | June 25, 2008 9:50 AM
Do people in the White House sincerely think this will work?
Posted by: Joe | June 25, 2008 10:08 AM
Four billion Third Worlders doing heavy labor (no Wal-Marts) metabolize 3500 Calories/body-day. A metabolic Calorie is 1000 gram-calories. Summed heat issuing from their flesh is
(4x10^9 bodies)(3500 Cal/body-day)(1000 cal/Cal)(365.242 days/year) = 5.11x10^18 calories/year.
Add daily cooking fires, slash and burn agriculture, and stock animal metabolisms to obtain a much larger, truer number. Ice at 0°C masses 0.917 g/cm^3. 80 cal/gm melts it into 0°C water. Third World body heat annually melts
(5.11x10^18 cal)/[(80 cal/g)(0.917 g/cm^3)(10^15 cm^3/km^3)] = 70 km^3 of ice.
Greenland's ice cap between 1993-1994 and 1998-1999 lost at least 51 km^3/year of ice on the average, Science 289(5478) 428 (2000). Whose fault was that - with another 20 km^3 loss/year in excess to thin Arctic ice?
The problem is the Third World. If we wish to save the whole planet we need only clean up a well-defined, expanding mess.
Posted by: Uncle Al | June 25, 2008 10:53 AM
There was also a Supreme Court decision that required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, but the Executive Branch seems to be taking a "maybe if we wait long enough they'll forget about it" approach to dealing with that one.
Posted by: onymous | June 25, 2008 11:29 AM
Oops, I see from the article that the email in question is the EPA's response to the court decision. Took them long enough.
Posted by: onymous | June 25, 2008 11:31 AM
Actually, for me this and similar incidents highlight the fact that the system of governance in the US, with all the famous checks and balances, is actually full of loopholes open to be abused by those who are willing to do so. It is unpleasant that the current administration does not have basic respect to the rule of law, but I am surprised by the extent the system seems to rely on that respect. What's the point of having the EPA at all if they can be waived off so easily?
Posted by: Moshe | June 25, 2008 3:23 PM
Moshe, although there's no doubt that "some" law breaking has gone on by the current and previous administrations, it's more the adherence to the letter of the law than whether the law is honored that's at stake. Lawyers trawl through laws to try to find anything that can be done profitably within the letter of the law. As a first principle, "if the law allows it, do it", with no concern for ethical issues that might arise from adherence to the letter of the law, allows Big Corporations to do plenty enough bad stuff with lots of respect for the letter of the law. Indeed, when there is blowback, the big corporation will be the first to insist that the law be applied strictly to limit damage to their interests that originates in the damage they caused by their perfectly legal behaviour.
Not forgetting that the Big Corporations were careful to encourage legislators to write the laws to help their interests. How much respect are such laws supposed to be due? Loopholes are often written in on purpose.
Although of course the analogy is weak, extending respect for the laws to Physics would have us still with Aristotle and Ptolomy. I guess the process that legislation doesn't seem to do as well as Physics is an occasional simplification and pruning of the laws, though we could be better at that too.
Posted by: Peter Morgan | June 25, 2008 3:49 PM
Peter, the list of law-breaking has become so large, it amounts to essentially a Denial-of-Service attack. The current administration does not attempt the skirt the law by adhering to the letter and ignoring the spirit - it goes the additional steps of asking: "What's the penalty if we break the law, remembering that we control the Justice Department and have appointed a majority of the Supreme Court." It goes the extra length of breaking so many laws, it can be confident that a shortage of investigators and prosecutors guarantees that they will get away with most of it, even without such extreme measures as preemptive pardons and retroactive immunity. But why take any risks, they do that, too, to CYA. The Bush Administration is not practicing politics as usual - it has been taking a salt-the-Earth approach to Federal programs to drown them in the bathtub.
Posted by: Ron | June 25, 2008 4:10 PM
That's precisely my point Peter. If the current administration is able to find a legal maneuver enabling them wiretap phone conversations of American citizens (to give just one example), then in practice the right to privacy was not (and is not, and will not be...) constitutionally protected to start with, and cannot be "restored" just by electing a saner president...so I'd worry more about weak or non-existent protections than the fact that the current administration is willing to exploit those weaknesses of the law.
Posted by: Moshe | June 25, 2008 4:15 PM
Chad, you may be seriously overestimating the average emotional age of the current administration...
Posted by: Michael I | June 25, 2008 4:49 PM
Moshe (in #6): it's not clear that "checks and balances" applies here. The EPA is a division of the Executive Branch, so technically they are subordinate to the President, and he probably doesn't even need to look for a loophole to ignore them. It's the same way that the White House has edited and censored documents coming out of NASA, the DOE, etc. Similarly, the EPA chief's decision to overrule his staff and forbid California to regulate tailpipe emissions seems to have been ordered by Cheney. I don't think any of these are breaking or even skirting the law; they're showing stunning disrespect for the experts in their employ, but they're probably acting legally. The only place where I see a role for checks and balances is this: the Supreme Court has demanded that the EPA deal with CO2, but I don't know how this can be enforced, short of some sort of legal action against the President.
Maybe a lawyer can step in to this thread and explain things better?
Posted by: onymous | June 25, 2008 4:50 PM
#11: To borrow from Jackson, another famously bad President: "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
Posted by: Jamie Bowden | June 26, 2008 9:42 AM
From the article:
-"There is a long legal history supporting the principle that the president should have the candid advice of his advisers," Mr. Fratto said.-
Oh, Reeeaaalllly?
Overall, I don't think maturity is really a requirement to be a government official, is it?
Posted by: SophieHirschfeld | June 26, 2008 8:04 PM