It must take a few years to wash out an entire bucket of pig blood.
After he was doused with humiliation days after the 2000 election, Al Gore painfully swallowed his hopes of becoming the ultimate homecoming king and worked on washing out the visions of George W. Bush’s people laughing and pointing at this country’s grand stage. It was quite the Carrie nightmare for the vice president, and it must have taken awhile for the night tremors to calm. Perhaps feeling a little embarrassed and betrayed, Gore buried himself in the life of a commoner.
His political image has been whitened once again, but now his wrath is quickly kicking in. There he was a few weeks ago, testifying before Congress on the devastating effects of greenhouse gases. The gym doors have been slammed shut and fire is spreading quickly. We are all cooked.
In a haunting follow-up, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases shortly after Gore stared daggers into the eyes of House representatives and senators. The EPA claimed it lacked such authority under the act, but now will re-evaluate its role.
The EPA has never been one to turn down an extra bat or lead pipe in its beat-down arsenal. Not too long ago, the agency tightened particulate matter regulations and threatened the spread of nonattainment areas across the U.S. If the EPA does take a swing at regulating tailpipe emissions, thousands of road and bridge construction projects—particularly in urban areas—could be bruised and bludgeoned beyond recognition. You can throw all the efforts of environmental streamlining into the dumpster along with the carcass of future mobility in this country.
But before I sling any more bad blood between the highway and bridge building industry and the EPA, perhaps we should look at a situation unfolding in Illinois. There, the state has announced its plan to eliminate all emission tests for vehicles built before 1996. According to the Chicago Tribune, state documents show the changes are expected to boost smog-producing pollution from cars by 37% in 2009. Nearly 40% of those cars that flunked the emission test last year would have gone undetected with this “refreshed” approach.
U.S. automakers have taken steps, which also have been slow, to eliminate more and more of those greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. And, according to scientific fact, the move has indeed helped scrub a cloud or two on a daily basis. Illinois, however, is turning its back on this progress and, in essence, on the health of its citizens.
Perhaps what the EPA should do before any re-evaluation is to sit down with the people behind this emission testing elimination process and convince them—with the intellectual impact of a bat or lead pipe—that the move lacks any degree of common sense. If the EPA does add carbon dioxide to its backpack of regulatory powers and Illinois and other states are without strict emission regulations, then highway projects are as doomed as the polar ice cap. Furthermore, having that kind of clash in policy between the federal and state governments is backward in every way.
Measures should be taken to slow the hole, but before the EPA comes in and cleans house, I think it should talk to all involved, including the automakers and the road and bridge industry. However, I have a feeling that action lies at the bottom of the EPA bucket.
