Top staffers for Environmental Protection Agency-hating EPA chief Scott Pruitt announced the agency’s Smart Sectors program Tuesday. Under this, the EPA will work in close partnership with industries it regulates. In a press release, Pruitt said:
“When we consider American business as a partner, as opposed to an adversary, we can achieve better environmental outcomes” [...] “The Smart Sectors program is designed to effectively engage business partners throughout the regulatory process. The previous administration created a narrative that you can’t be pro-business and pro-environment. This program is one of the many ways we can address that false choice and work together to protect the environment. When industries and regulators better understand each other, the economy, public, and the environment all benefit.”
Golly, that sounds just fantastic. Cooperative efforts to protect the environment are better than adversarial ones. And, in fact, there has been quite a lot of agency-industry-environmental-activist cooperation since the EPA was founded nearly 50 years ago.
But since the guy announcing this program of cooperation was at the forefront of the adversarial approach by initiating or joining 14 lawsuits against the EPA while he was attorney general of Oklahoma, it’s time to break out the salt shaker. What Pruitt is really talking about is making the EPA knuckle under whenever industry raises objections to the mildest agency initiatives.
Naturally, industry loves this plan. The press release includes laudatory comments from representatives of aerospace, agriculture, automotive, chemical manufacturing, construction, electronics, forestry and wood products, iron and steel manufacturing, hard-rock mining, oil and gas, and utilities. Notably absent, however, are comments from environmental advocates.
Pruitt has a very interesting approach to cooperation. As The New York Times informed readers in July, he “has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law.”
Then late last month, based on an analysis of his calendar from May to September, reporters at The Washington Post revealed that Pruitt has been on an intensive schedule of meeting with representatives of various industries. Soon after these little chats, he makes decisions favorable to those corporate interests. The New York Times researched its own version of this story:
Since taking office in February, Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. chief has held back-to-back meetings, briefing sessions and speaking engagements almost daily with top corporate executives and lobbyists from all the major economic sectors that he regulates — and almost no meetings with environmental groups or consumer or public health advocates, according to a 320-page accounting of his daily schedule from February through May, the most detailed look yet at what Mr. Pruitt has been up to since he took over the agency.
The Times’ headline writer called this a “stream” of meetings. More like a tsunami.
As for the cooperative approach, Reuters reported late Tuesday that the EPA has taken its first formal step in Pruitt’s crusade to crush the Clean Power Plan, which was designed by the Obama administration to cut carbon emissions from fossil fuel-burning power plants by 32 percent by 2030 compared to emissions in 2005:
The EPA document, distributed to members of the agency’s Regulatory Steering Committee, said the EPA “is issuing a proposal to repeal the rule.”
The agency now intends to issue what it calls an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to solicit input as it considers “developing a rule similarly intended to reduce CO2 emissions from existing fossil fuel electric utility generating units.”
No other details are yet available. But it’s obvious that the EPA’s new rule is intended to be a pale shadow of the CPP and will fall far short of the U.S. non-binding pledge as part of the Paris Climate Agreement. Pr*sident Trump signed an Executive Order on Energy Independence in March that commanded a review of the CPP. In June, he announced first steps in withdrawing the United States from the agreement that the vast majority of nations on the planet have signed.
Reuters reported that the EPA’s replacement rule for the CPP could be announced by the end of this week. Whenever the agency rolls it out, a 60-day public comment period will be set. Americans should bury the EPA in comments.