POLLUTED COVERAGE (PART THREE): This new study from the National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that while air pollution is declining, the reduction could be accelerated by a "multi-state, multi-pollutant" approach that sets broad overall reduction targets, then allows industrial facilities to trade reduction permits with each other. (Current Clean Air Act rules generally require cumbersome site-by-site, pollutant-by-pollutant litigation.) It's, um, a scientific study, and so perhaps The New York Times might have been forgiven for reporting it in a short article on page A11, while The Washington Post might have been forgiven for according the study but three grafs under "Washington in Brief." Here's what was missing from the coverage. The "multi-state, multi-pollutant" approach just endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences
is exactly what the Bush administration has proposed to adopt under its Clear Skies initiative.
The ill-named Clear Skies plan would replace the Clean Air Act's cumbersome site-by-site litigation formula with a new system that sets broad overall reduction targets, then allows industrial facilities to trade reduction permits with each other. The Clear Skies plan has been roundly condemned by Democrats, especially in the Senate--among the president contenders, John Kerry and Joe Lieberman have been withering in their denunciations of Clear Skies--and mocked by editorial writers. As this space noted in December, Democrats are fighting Clear Skies exactly because they know it would reduce air pollution: They want to deny George W. Bush a progressive victory going into the 2004 election. But the official reason Democrats, and editorial writers, have derided Clear Skies is their claim it wouldn't work.
Comes now the National Academy of Sciences to say the Clear Skies approach is desirable, and the big papers bury that inconvenient development. The Times story does note, though not "up high," that the study backs the president's proposal; the Post sniglet says nothing about the connection, simply presenting the study as a disembodied research finding. New York Times and Washington Post editors both have placed denunciations of the Clear Skies proposal one the front page; but when the plan receives very prominent expert support, that's not news. Some studies from the same organization, studies that discomfit the Bush White House, have gone directly to page one--for instance, a National Research Council finding that the fuel economy of SUVs and pickup trucks could be increased was (deservedly) a headline story. But a major scientific study backing a controversial Bush position is quietly buried. Now, what's the word I am looking for?
http://www.tnr.com/easterbrook.mhtml?pid=1276
