TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/062689/06268900.054

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 7KB | 122 lines

NATION, Page 16

Smell That Fresh Air!

Bush's plan for reducing pollution offers something to almost

everybody

By George J. Church


    George Bush was under fire as "the environmentalist" President
in campaign pledge only. But last week he managed to confound his
critics. He broke a decade-long impasse by proposing major steps
to reduce acid rain, smog caused by auto exhaust and toxic
chemicals discharged into the air. In a political tour de force,
he managed to draw at least grudging acceptance from almost all
sides. Environmentalists were pleased that the plan met their
minimum goals. Industry grumbled about heavy costs: $14 billion to
$19 billion annually by the end of the year 2000. But utility
executives sighed with relief that they would be allowed to choose
whatever they found to be the cheapest method of cleaning up.

    More important, the plan might actually lead to more breathable
air. It calls for a 50% slash in acid-rain-producing sulfur-dioxide
emissions by the turn of the century, a 40% tightening of emissions
standards for hydrocarbons from automobile tail pipes, a 75% cut
in cancer-causing toxic chemicals poured into the atmosphere over
an unspecified period, and in its most visionary -- perhaps
pie-in-the-sky -- aspect, a fleet of cars that run on fuels cleaner
than gasoline (probably methanol, though ethanol or compressed
natural gas could also be used). Some 500,000 such cars would be
on the road by 1995, 750,000 the following year, a million a year
from 1997 through 2004.

    In Congress leaders agree with Richard Ayres, senior attorney
of the environmentalist Natural Resources Defense Council, that
"there will be legislation now." Bush's proposals are in the form
of amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970, which has been altered
only once, in 1977. Democrats blamed the lack of progress on the
Reagan White House, and with much justice; Bush's plan marks his
sharpest break yet from the policies of his predecessor. But
Democrats Robert Byrd, the former Senate majority leader, and John
Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also
blocked legislation, in deference to the fears of miners of
high-sulfur coal in Byrd's West Virginia and automakers and workers
in Dingell's Michigan.

    Bush unveiled his proposals Monday in the White House, then
flew west to promote his plan. In Nebraska he took the wheel of an
experimental car fueled by ETBE, an ethanol blend made from the
state's abundant corn (the chauffeured Bush has not driven an
automobile in many years). In Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park,
the President declared, "The most fundamental obligation of
Government is to protect the people -- the people's health, the
people's safety."

    The political genius of Bush's something-for-everybody plan is
that it meets environmentalists' objectives by giving industry
unprecedented freedom to choose how to cut emissions. On acid rain,
it calls for a reduction by the year 2000 of 10 million tons, or
50%, in the amount of sulfur dioxide spewed into the air, mostly
by coal-burning electric utilities. Says an Administration
official: "Ten million was clearly a litmus test with the
`enviros.'"

    But power plants can achieve the reduction any way they want.
They can install scrubbers on smokestacks, switch to burning
low-sulfur coal or adopt new technology for cleaner burning of
high-sulfur coal. Moreover, they can trade what would amount to
pollution rights. If one utility cuts sulfur-dioxide emissions more
than the law requires, it can sell the unused portion of the
emissions it is allowed to another company that is having trouble
meeting its standard. While the total reduction would be the same,
both companies would cut costs: the seller because it would get
extra money, and the buyer because it might be less expensive for
it to purchase pollution rights than to make the required slash in
emissions immediately.

    In combatting smog, Bush conveniently opted to develop
alternative-fuel cars in the future rather than move quickly to
require costly reductions in tail-pipe emissions; the controls he
did propose nationally for gasoline-driven cars are less stringent
than those that California has already enacted. Use of the new
fuels would require an expensive redesign. For example, because a
car can travel only about half as far on a gallon of methanol as
on a gallon of gas, automakers would have to build cars with bigger
fuel tanks. Worse, motorists would probably not want to buy
methanol cars until the fuel was widely available, and gas stations
would probably not install methanol pumps until large numbers of
cars using that fuel were roaming the roads. Moreover, Bush ducked
the single most effective device for lowering gasoline usage: a
hefty gas tax, which would also serve to reduce the deficit.

    His proposals on the discharge of toxic chemicals into the air
are the least detailed part of his plan. Bush will ask Congress to
revise ineffectual laws from the 1970s and order all polluters to
adopt whatever the Environmental Protection Agency defines as the
"maximum available control technology" to slash those emissions.

    Before Bush unveiled his proposals, public opinion surveys were
giving him exceedingly low marks on the environment. Actually,
though, the President set up a clean-air working group immediately
after the Inauguration. It proceeded in what is becoming a
trademark manner for this Administration. The group met repeatedly
with environmentalists, industrialists and key lawmakers but gave
them no hint of what its members were thinking. The President's
advisers then fought it out among themselves at six meetings of the
Domestic Policy Council. EPA administrator William Reilly pressed
for stringent measures; budget boss Richard Darman argued that the
cost did not justify the health and environmental benefits. Bush
attended three of those meetings and called environmentalists and
industrialists into the White House to present their cases directly
to him. Finally, White House chief of staff John Sununu took three
30-page single-spaced option papers to Camp David on Saturday, June
10. He and the President went over them line by line on Sunday,
making the final decisions.

    Bush's bill, expected to exceed 300 pages, will be drafted over
the next month. The final law will be shaped by a hard-to-predict
tug-of-war between those who want to go further --
environmentalists applauded the proposal only as a starting point
-- and legislators seeking to protect the interests of industries
in their communities. Still, Bush has given another reason to hope
that what appeared to be the Administration's early drift and
indecision was really only a matter of a new President taking his
time.


-- Michael Duffy and Glenn Garelik/Washington