EPA Finds Compound Used in Fracking in Wyoming Aquifer

It now seems to be a safe assumption that you don't think the waiver should have been issued. Since we differ there, we're obviously going to differ on what we feel was the motivation for the reconsideration. I consider it to be correcting an incorrect decision. And as such I see no reason for delay.

The partisan website you linked to provides no context for the supposed "misleading statements", so that assertion is not supported. I'm not quite sure how it's even relevant. Just because a Republican gets worked up about a Democratic administration's decision doesn't make the decision itself political (and the same goes if you switch the parties).

 

The federal law clearly states that individual states have no authority to regulate fuel economy standards. Do you honestly believe California setting cafe standards does not amount to fuel economy standards?

Vow of silence key to White House-Calif. fuel economy talks - NYTimes.com

The solution that the EPA and CARB came up with was to claim that CARB was regulating emissions and not fuel economy when they set Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards(CAFE). This was to claim they were not violating the EPCA, which they obviously are, and was the basis of the 2002 case.

If your claim is this was not a distraction or political, you may note that the waiver did effect nogotiations on the ghg bill in congress at that time, and was the impetus for for the murkowski bill to strip the epa of the authority to remove greenhouse gas regulation from the epa. It was the basis of Texas's first politics leading to the refusal and court case. How can you possibly think there was no politics involved?

Did you read it? Do you think regulating cafe standards have nothing to do with fuel economy? That is what they were testifying too.

If a party reverses a decision to violate a law and knows it will anger a large groups of politicians and create delays and new legislation in congress that is quite political. You make it sound as if it was a minor decision instead of a long plotted CARB strategy. It was a thumb in the eye to the Bush EPA, and a raised middle finger to people that want clear effective simple federal regulations. One that backfired if you actually want ghg to be regulated well, one whose corrupted and political means led to some nasty politics on both sides.

Now assume instead of trying to create a patchwork of regulations to make it hard on auto companies to follow, the epa had simply said they thought they wanted to work with the NHTSA to set CAFE targets? You know actually regulate instead of play politics. This really wasn't about the 2016 standard that bush/congress had already put in place but not set a timetable, it was about the 2025 target. EPA regulation but no waiver would have been within the letter of the law, and would not have set off congressional bills and huge PACs against the EPAs regulation. Then maybe the EPA could have concentrated on its job. But I'm sure you think its job was to satisfy politicians and donors in california to reverse a "bad" decission.

So here is my question to you - Do you think a patchwork of regulation making auto companies have different fleet mixes in different states would actually reduce pollution? Or do you think that if CARB didn't agree to go along with federal regulation, Congress would have passed the bill to strip the EPA of ghg regulation to remove its ability to give CARB this power. I think the votes would have been there. It would have definitely gone back to court under EPCA if CARB was sucessful in implementing different CAFE standards.

 

It's not as clear or obvious as you assert, otherwise there wouldn't have been several lawsuits on the matter.

CARB did not set CAFE under their GHG standards. It's a fleet average GHG per mile standard. Now as we discussed wrt stationary sources, efficiency is the most effective tool for controlling GHG. So the result of regulating fleet GHG emissions will almost certainly be an increase in fleet MPG. And in that sense one can argue that CARB is regulating fuel economy, or that the regulation is "related to" fuel economy. However since that isn't the direct parameter that's being regulated, one can also argue the opposite position. That kind of conflict is for the Court to decide.. and they have generally decided the EPCA preemption doesn't apply (Green Mountain Chrysler Plymouth Dodge Jeep v. Crombie, Central Valley Chrysler-Jeep Inc. v. Goldstone).

As I stated in a previous post, my argument supporting the legality of the actions does not mean I support them 100%. Pointing out flaws in the CARB regime is irrelevant to the legality.

Since you see this as some long-planned conspiracy borne out of political revenge, further discussion is unlikely to be productive. Have a good one.

 

My point is and was this way of regulating ghg is a political distraction, and by focusing so much energy on this the EPA is not addressing dangerous pollution as it should.

I don't say there is a political conspiracy. CARB has been quite open about wanting to regulate CAFE standards, and Jackson also was fairly open about helping CARB get the waiver. I hope you can at least see why Issa has accused Nichols of misleading statements and why he is attempting to get her to respond to his inquirys. You will also note that CARB has not implemented the waver when it comes to cafe standards, only threatened to use it and created lawsuits and a political firestorm. I don't really have any problem with you likeing the waver, my problem is in people seeing it as the proper way to clean up the environment.

By the way this week Big Food again successfully argued that 1/8 cup of tomato paste is 1/2 cup of vegetables. The school nutrition improvements were struck down in favor of these "truths", that I will continue to call lies.

 

Getting back to the OP, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson discussed the Wyoming matter today on EnergyNow (link below - go to end of show). Quite balanced, I thought.

She confirmed there is some indication of a contamination problem in several groundwater monitoring wells. She said as far they know, drinking water is not impacted, but alternate water supply is being provided by the company. She made an important point that the Wyoming gas formation is an unusually shallow geologic formation, such that the shallow ground water aquifer might be impacted unexpectedly in some local zones.

Shale Oil - The Rush for Black Gold - 11.20.2011 | Energy Now

 

to AG; while common sense tells us that CO2=MPG think about implications of using different fuel formulations with different hydrocarbons C/H ratio, biofuels or CO2 capture..

There is also a question of legality and application of logic. Whilest out of firearms handguns most commonly used in murders, it does not mean that every handgun purchaser is planning a killing.