This way, you only hamper our ability to take a breath

A cynical piece of fallout from yesterday’s ozone standard decision buried in a Washington Post analysis piece.

For the past several years the gas industry in North Texas has repeatedly claimed that they’re not really a significant source of smog-forming pollution, despite official inventories showing a huge rise in emissions from their sources since 2005. This rise was what fueled Downwinders at Risk’s Fair Share Campaign this last spring to include more pollution cuts from gas sources in the official DFW “do-over” clean air plan that attracted the support of seven local North Texas city and county governments.

In words and manner reminiscent of the Midlothian cement plants’ party line in the 1990’s, gas company spokespeople argued that it was all those nasty old cars that you and I drive, and not their facilities, that cause our smog problems. What we emit, they said, was inconsequential, really.

But on page 2 of the Post article, there is this piece of news about what those same gas companies have been saying to the Obama Administration in regard to a lower ozone standard:

“Natural-gas companies, for example, argued to the administration that the rule might hamper their ability to take advantage of newly accessible natural-gas reserves.”

As Kathy Martin, an oil and gas engineer that was one of the citizen expert witnesses for the Dallas Gas Drilling Task Force this past was quoted as saying, “I’m not anti-drilling. I’m just anti-lying. But sometimes they’re the same thing.”