Prometheus 6

Of, By and For Corporate Lobbyists

The administration is set for a major push of its Orwellian "Clear Skies Act," which the National Academy of Sciences revealed last month would result in more air pollution than under current law. Yesterday, secret documents obtained by the National Resources Defense Counsel revealed the legislation was written by corporate lobbyists representing the industries it supposedly regulates. In April 2003, a group of eight power plant companies reviewed the administration's first draft and submitted a wish list of "essential" changes to further weaken already anemic pollution controls. The administration gave the polluters what they wanted. Now, Congress has to decide if it will join the charade. Apparently, the media can't be bothered to report on corporate control of administration policy. Thus far, this story hasn't been covered by a single major newspaper. Plenty of info, however, on Camilla Parker Bowles.

PRESIDENT BUSH SELLS OUT PUBLIC HEALTH: Why was President Bush willing to take instructions from eight corporations at the expense of public health? Follow the money. All told, the corporations gave nearly $100,000 directly to Bush's presidential campaigns from individual executives and their Political Action Committees (PACs)   including $27,860 from Cinergy and $24,200 from American Electric Power.

ALTERED BILL CREATED INDUSTRY SLUSH FUND: The "Clear Skies Act" works on a "cap-and-trade" model, where the government caps total emissions on certain pollutants and then sells emissions allowances to industry. Under the initial version of the Act, proceeds from the sales of emissions caps would go back to the taxpayers. But corporate lobbyists didn't like that idea. They asked the administration to create "a largely unregulated Department of Energy account to fund industry efforts to develop pollution control technologies." And the lobbyists got exactly what they wanted. In other words, the law would now "pay industry to comply with preexisting laws   at the taxpayers expense."

UNDERMINING THE EPA: The "Clear Skies Act" began as the brainchild of an industry lobbyist. In April 2001, a top utility industry lobbyist, Quin Shea, told coal industry representatives that "he and his colleagues had a plan for the White House to allow coal plants to emit more pollution for much longer than the Environmental Protection Agency had been planning under the Clean Air Act." (You can read the transcript of his presentation here, starting on page 46.) That plan formed the basis of the "Clear Skies Act," which would "delay and dilute cuts in power plants' sulfur, nitrogen and mercury pollution that are required by the Clean Air Act." The Act would also "weaken the Clean Air Act's public health safeguards protecting local air quality, curbing pollution from upwind states and restoring visibility in our national parks."

IGNORING GLOBAL WARMING: President Bush has abandoned his campaign promise to place caps on carbon dioxide emissions. The "Clear Skies Act" does nothing to address the global warming problem. The conservative co-sponsors, in fact, don't see it as a problem at all. Sen. James Inhofe recently said that climate change was "the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of Church and State." For the facts on global warming and a responsible way to address the problem, check out this American Progress report.