Every now and again, something really funny will jump out of the news and bite Polimom right on the nose… like these two stories:
EPA cracks down on lawn mower pollution
Devices that clean the engines’ emissions do not pose a safety problem, the EPA said. Without new pollution controls, engines with less than 50 horsepower would account for 18 percent of smog-forming emissions from mobile sources by 2020, the agency has estimated.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are so lucky that the EPA is stepping into the breach to protect us from those dangerous small-engine fumes. Thank goodness they’re on the job! (cough…cough…)
But wait! What’s this?
Court blocks EPA from easing rules on air pollution
A federal appeals court on Friday overturned a clean-air regulation issued by the Bush administration that would have let many power plants, refineries and factories avoid installing costly new pollution controls to help offset any increased emissions caused by repairs and replacements of equipment.
Yes, this same EPA, in its Bush administration persona, was ready to let aging power plants side-step those nasty, expensive pollution controls.
Hmmm…. help me here…. lawn mower engine vs refinery. I must be missing something. Even if I bought the manufacturing industry’s argument (which I don’t), I can’t avoid drawing some rather obvious conclusions from these two stories.
Can you?
The Bush EPA arguably tried their stupidest semantic evasion yet–more blatant even than breach/overtopping and all the Iraq stuff. They actually tried to claim that legislation that required plants to install pollution control when they made any changes, didn’t apply to all changes . As the court said:
In this context, there is no reason the usual tools of statutory construction should not apply and hence no reason why “any” should not mean “any.”
That’s from the D.C. court, it’s not exactly known for its liberalism. Kevin Drum had a good post at the Washington Monthly.
Any, all… such quibblers in the world, eh?
You’re right about Kevin Drum’s post…. and the dialogue in the comments was a great read, too. Thanks for sharing the link!