worse than anthrax: Inhofe to head Senate environment panel; mercury emissions to be ok

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SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/96890_inhofe23.shtml

Pendulum swings back as Inhofe heads Senate environment panel

By JOAN LOWY, Saturday, November 23, 2002

SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -- Nowhere is the impact of the shift from Democratic to Republican

control of the Senate more dramatic than in the ascension of Oklahoma Sen.

Inhofe to head the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Blunt and unabashedly conservative, Inhofe, 68, is almost the mirror opposite in

his views on environmental issues of outgoing Chairman Jim Jeffords of Vermont,

a hero to environmentalists who gave Democrats control of the Senate when he

became an independent last year.

Where Jeffords pushed legislation to curb power plant emissions of carbon

dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas responsible for global warming, Inhofe opposes

any mandate on carbon emissions. Where Jeffords wanted more stringent emissions

standards for other pollutants than those proposed by the Bush administration,

Inhofe suggested the administration's emissions targets are too stringent.

Where Jeffords used the committee's subpoena power to wage investigations of the

Bush administration's environmental policies, Inhofe is expected to assist the

White House in redefining environmental laws and rolling back enforcement.

" I think the shift from Sen. Jeffords to Sen. Inhofe foretells a sea change in

the Senate's attitude toward the environment, going from the most

environmentally progressive senator to the least environmentally progressive

senator chairing the most important environmental committee, " said

O'Donnell of the Clean Air Trust, an environmental group in Washington.

" It's not just that (Inhofe) is conservative, " O'Donnell said, " but I think he

genuinely believes environmental regulations are bad for the country as they

exist today and he wants to change that. "

Jeffords' rating from the League of Conservation Voters is 100. Inhofe's rating

is zero.

Inhofe does not deny that his views place him firmly in the hard right of the

GOP. During a heated debate on the Senate floor last year with the late

Democratic Sen. Wellstone, Inhofe said: " There probably are not two members

of the U.S. Senate who are further apart philosophically than the senior senator

from Minnesota and myself. I would probably, in my own mind, believe him to be

an extreme left-wing radical liberal and he believes me to be an extreme

right-wing radical conservative. And I think maybe we are both right. "

For industry leaders, Inhofe represents a welcome relief from what they view as

the excessive environmental regulation proposed by Jeffords.

Under Inhofe, there won't be " the same rush to produce a solution that was far

out of step with the problem, as was the case under Jeffords, " said Dan

Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association

for the utility industry.

Reauthorization of the Clean Air Act is one of the key issues expected to come

before the committee next year. The utility industry strongly opposed Jeffords'

plan to curb carbon dioxide and mercury emissions, which would have required

adding expensive equipment to coal-fired power plants.

" We're optimistic that Chairman Inhofe is going to take a much more moderate

approach to these issues and reflect not only on the concerns of the

environmental community, but those of business and industry as well and (the

impact on) electricity costs, " Riedinger said.

" Inhofe does not believe that the answer to everything is more government

regulation, " said Myron Ebell of the industry-oriented Competitive Enterprise

Institute. " He knows that there are major problems with most of the major

environmental (laws) Congress has passed. Rather than having him add on to the

mess we already have, I expect him to be a reformer. "

Environmentalists, naturally, don't see that as a virtue. " He's going to cloak

what he wants to do in the language of reform, but what he would call reform, we

would call gutting, " O'Donnell said.

Environmentalists consider Inhofe's rhetoric particularly harsh. The GOP

lawmaker has accused the Environmental Protection Agency of " Gestapo tactics "

and likened former EPA Administrator Carol Browner to World War II Japanese

radio propagandist Tokyo Rose.

" He's not smooth and he doesn't try to conceal what his opinions are, " conceded

Ebell, an Inhofe supporter. " That can sometimes ruffle a few feathers. "

Inhofe may be limited in how much he can accomplish by the GOP's narrow majority

on the environment committee, most likely a single vote. Republican moderates on

the committee such as Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Arlen Specter of

Pennsylvania, who lean more toward Jeffords' approach to environmental issues,

may also limit Inhofe's ability to move his agenda forward.

" The real test for any chairman is their ability to get things out of their

committee, " said former oil industry lobbyist Bill O'Keefe, chairman of the

conservative Marshall Institute. " Senator Inhofe is going to have to find a way

to craft legislation so that it gets a majority while sticking by his principles

and reaching out to moderates. "

© 1998-2002 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

[imo, a nation that can elect " poison our environment " people to high office is

a nation beset by corporate monopoly of major media, whose spin-doctors serve as

ideology-meisters shaping ideas that talking heads recite, ideas that ever bias

towards public acceptance of more pollution. imo, it is my fate to live in late

stages of a decadent but still powerful empire made vicious by greed's

confrontation with resource limits and realities of environmental degradation.

--]