Good Luck With That

Two separate stories about President Obama underscore the shotgun-wedding feeling a lot of environmentalists have when it comes to this November's election. For The Guardian comes news that the President's campaign has launched a new "Environmentalists for Obama" green re-election website. Among the obstacles such an effort has to overcome are Obama's blocking of more protective ozone standards, allowing Arctic drilling, encouraging fracking for oil and natural gas, and advancing the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Locally, throwing the best Regional EPA Administrator We Ever Had under the bus will also leave a lot of us holding a grudge. The Campaign site is selling the positives, like increasing gas mileage standards, cracking down on coal plants and investing heavily in alternative energy. But it's stories like this one in a recent Washington Post that undercut the sincerity of that pro-green message. Responding to a trumped-up request from House Republicans for a list of all EPA regulations expected to cost more than one billion dollars, the President mistakenly included an air pollution standard he shouldn't have and undervalued the health and economic benefits of others. This happened because the EPA didn't help draft the response to an inquiry over its own regulations. Instead, it as written from inside the White House, most probably by the Office of Management and Budget, where environmental regulations go to die these days. To anyone looking for cynical motives, the exchange of e-mails between EPA and the White House over this matter that the Post story illuminates gives them plenty of ammunition. Besides being blindsided, EPA officials accuse the White house of trying to placate critics of the Agency and undermine its mission. When push comes to shove, it's still economics, and perhaps campaign economics, driving policy, not public health.