Environmental Deregulation

Here’s the lead of a Washington Post story by Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin on Bush’s “Climate Leaders” program to recruit companies to voluntarily reduce greenhouse emissions –

Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews.

They do a nice job getting James Connaughton, the White House environmental policy chief, to mouth the predictable bromides about the superiority of voluntary programs to government regulation and then skewer him. Connaughton claims that the program is working and that companies that opposed the Kyoto treaty “are now coming forward in what we would say is a more economically rational and more sensible policy environment…. They are stepping up to the plate in a way they never have — never did in the 1990s. That’s a huge step,” Connaughton said.

Turns out, “Only a tiny fraction of the thousands of U.S. companies with pollution problems — 50 in all — have joined Climate Leaders, and of the companies that have signed up, only 14 have set goals.”

Furthermore:

Although Climate Leaders represents the cutting edge of Bush’s strategy, it has a budget of $1 million a year and a full-time staff of three, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which runs the program. And although some “Leaders” are big names in manufacturing — among them General Motors Corp., Caterpillar Inc., U.S. Steel Corp. and Raytheon Co. — most are perennial “good citizens” who were participating in “green” programs years before Bush called for volunteers….

But the administration has made no headway signing up big utility companies with the worst emissions records. Many of those companies vigorously opposed mandatory controls. Now they are refusing to take part in voluntary measures that set targets, largely for fear that those programs eventually will lead to government regulation.

“Some just see it as a slippery slope,” said a lobbyist for several major utilities.

Let’s go over that last bit again – and note that this is the explanation offered by Gugliotta and Pianin, citing an industry lobbyist. Many of the companies that vigorously opposed mandatory controls are now refusing to take part in voluntary programs, and we’re supposed to believe that this is because they fear that they “eventually will lead to government regulation.” I guess Gugliotta and Pianin used up their quota of incredulity dealing with the Bush administration and didn’t have any left for an industry lobbyist.