Over the last five years, the number of states that have adopted clean car standards to reduce global warming pollution from vehicles has risen to thirteen, but Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Stephen Johnson has blocked their legal right to implement these important standards. A January 24 Senate hearing produced yet more conclusive evidence that, in rejecting the waiver these states needed to implement their laws, Administrator Johnson ignored both his own scientists’ and lawyers’ recommendations.
While Johnson censors documents and silences scientists at the EPA, his deputy administrator, Marcus Peacock, is trying to improve “communication and transparency in government” through the use of an EPA blog. In his Washington Post column last week, “Enough About Pollution Regulations; Here's a Riff on Amy Winehouse,” Al Kamen takes Peacock to task for glossing over the key issues such as the clean car standards.
Peacock responded opaquely, noting that his blog is itself a risk, then added:
I’m pretty senior and will be gone in a year. A good question is how do we encourage, rather than discourage, the rank and file in government to take risks and test innovative ideas?
Please head over to the EPA’s blog and explain to Deputy Administrator Peacock that ignoring EPA scientists and analysts on an issue as central as global warming pollution from vehicles is not a way to “encourage risks and test innovative ideas.”
Click here and you’ll be taken directly to the EPA’s blog, where you can voice your opinion directly to Peacock. (You can find some tips on how to personalize blog comments here.)
After you’ve commented on the EPA blog, please use the form below to send us a copy of the comments you made on the EPA’s blog. By giving us copies of your comments, we can make sure that the EPA is allowing open online debate, and we can post any great comments that get rejected by the EPA on UCS’s own HybridBlog.org!
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s blog is one of the few channels currently open for citizens to express themselves directly, and openly, to high-ranking EPA officials. Please take advantage of this opportunity to keep the pressure on the EPA for their dubious decision on cleaner cars.
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