Newspoem 1 July 2008

White House Moves to Repeal Clean Air

1.

After a 2007 Supreme Court ruling found that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act, the EPA drafted a finding on greenhouse gases and the means of regulating them, and sent this document via email to the White House in December 2007.

The White House told EPA officials it refused to open the email, reported the New York Times six months later.

Because the White House refused to acknowledge the email, global warming, and the need to regulate emissions, disappeared.

Because I did not read the New York Times, the White House disappeared.

Because the White House disappeared, the Arctic polar ice cap reappeared.

Because you did not read this poem, the EPA drafted a finding on greenhouse gases and the means of regulating them, and sent this document via email to the White House in December 2007.

The White House told agency officials it refused to open the email, reported the New York Times six months later.

2.

The White House has put pressure on the EPA to delete sections of the finding that suggest that emissions endanger public welfare, propose how they could be regulated, and estimate the cost of regulation as well as the $500 billion to $2 trillion in possible benefits. The White House has asked the EPA instead to show that the Clean Air Act is flawed. The White House has asked the EPA to rewrite the finding to revisit the potential benefits of catastrophic weather, disease, and death, and to reclassify the ecosystem as a pollutant.

3.

10 days after the finding—which mandated strict fuel economy standards by 2018—was ignored, Congress and Bush passed a new bill mandating lax fuel economy standards by 2020. Against the unanimous recommendations of his staff, the EPA administrator did not allow California to impose tougher emission standards. Climate change, he said, requires global, not regional, solutions.

We must all work together if we are going to change the climate.

3.5.

Jason Burnett, the EPA's associate deputy administrator, resigned.

4.

Representative Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has subpoenaed White House documents related to the EPA's handling of recent climate-change and air-pollution decisions. The White House has refused to hand over the documents. "The president should have [the undemocratic authority to secretly suppress] the candid advice of his advisors," explained White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

5.

The contrasts between the immensity of the planet and its fate, the smallness of the Bush administration and its infantile behavior, and the enormous potential consequence of said administration's assumed power, traces a paradox that defies the exaggerations even of newspoetry.