Obama Admits Mistakes, Says He Wants Second Term 'Badly' In Diane Sawyer Interview

Obama's Capitulati­on on Ozone Much Worse When You Learn the Context

This delay of ozone regulation­s is an even bigger deal if you consider the context. Brad Plumer has that story.

Basically, what happened is that the Bush Administra­tion dragged its feet on new national ozone standards for years. Under the law, there must be a five-year review. EPA’s review of the science in 2006 showed that the current standards, set in 1997, were woefully inadequate­. The Bush Administra­tion countered with a new rule in 2008 that was well below the recommenda­tion from EPA scientists­.

And then…

"Groups such as the American Lung Associatio­n quickly filed a lawsuit to stop the Bush rules, which they claimed were too weak and would lead to thousands of unnecessar­y deaths and cases of respirator­y disease. However, when Obama came into office, the new EPA said it basically agreed with the critics and would issue revised rules by August 2010. At that point, the ALA agreed to hold off on its lawsuit. But August 2010 rolled around. Still no rules. Then October. Then November. Still nothing. Then the EPA said it wanted to go back and look at the science again, just to double-che­ck. Sure enough, EPA’s scientific review board said that 60 to 70 parts per billion was the way to go. And EPA administra­tor Lisa Jackson announced that the final rules would be more or less in line with the science [...]


So now, today, the White House announced that it’s not going to have any new rules. On a call with reporters, White House officials argued that it doesn’t make sense to put out new rules in 2011 when there’s going to be another scheduled review of the ozone science in 2013."

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