In U.S. environmental politics, the oil and gas industry always loses when righteous passion runs ahead of science. Lately, however, science has gained ground.
Shrill environmentalism has given way to the desire of many Americans for less government meddling in private lives. That doesn't mean that Americans have turned soft on the environment. It simply means that they don't consider environmental problems to be crises warranting the surrender of personal freedoms.
Making progress
This is progress. Environmental values have come to represent an essential dimension of responsible personal and corporate behavior. But the progress cools environmentalism as a political issue. People who accept environmental responsibility at a personal level neither need nor want perpetual external pressure to change behavior. They begin to demand facts from the panic peddlers. They want assurances that new laws and regulations are worth the cost. Among people such as this, it is difficult to score easy political points on the environment.
Responding to this new mood, the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to slash the Environmental Protection Agency's budget and take the sting out of several environmental laws that they deem excessive. Democratsand some faint-hearted Republicanssee this as a chance to draw a political line of demarcation in the ecosystem.
Republicans want to turn back the clock on environmental progress, they howl. It's a quaint resort to a shopworn tactic: self-promotional mischaracterization of the opposition.
President Clinton had the chance to lead on this issue, to keep the environmental needle pointed in the direction of progress rather than political opportunism. He chose the political route.
In a speech Aug. 8 in Baltimore, he not only kissed the environmental baby, he slobbered all over the poor thing. "There are people who want to strip away decades of public health protection," he declared. "I intend to fight them every step of the way." He flailed "lobbyists," "special interest groups," "loopholes," and other patent bugaboos responsible for the House vote "to gut environmental and public health protections." One of the House provisions, Clinton said, would allow refineries to "spew benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, without stringent safeguards." Good grief.
The National Petroleum Refiners Association, in a letter to the President, responded with delicious restraint: "It is unfortunate that you were not provided with accurate information before your presentation."
NPRA went on to point out that in its regulatory impact analysis for the provision Clinton mentioned, which would subject refiners to "maximum achievable control technology" (MACT) standards on air emissions, EPA had determined that current stationary source emission controls keep risks at satisfactory minimums. The benefits of applying costly MACT standards to toxic emissions from refineries thus would be negligible. Yet at the end of July, citing 15 year old emissions data that don't reflect current, much-improved conditions, EPA imposed the tougher standards anyway.
It was a clear case of regulatory overkill not warranted by science. The MACT regulation will add to refining costs and gain nothing for the environment or public health. The effort by the House to correct EPA's excesses was responsible and appropriate.
Confrontational politics
By contrast, Clinton's benzene commentary was inflammatory and incorrect. It harks back to an era of confrontational environmental politics that the U.S. electorate has begun to outgrow. Righteous environmental passion, heedless of science, is yesterday's ploy, but there are still politicians desperate enough to give it one more try. The way to respond, as NPRA did to Clinton's diatribe, is with facts. Environmentally responsible people will listen.
Copyright 1995 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.