With Bush’s final State of the Union Address just a few days from now [pause for applause], I’m happy to share a great presentation on W’s sorry legacy. Lots of great factoids for debates with conservatives, letters to the editor, and, of course, blog posts!

Related Posts:

• Karl Rove, Global Warming, and Bush’s Legacy
• The Failed Presidency of George W. Bush

We have known for weeks that EPA Administrator overruled his staff when announced late last year that the EPA was denying California’s application to regulate vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

Now we have the details of the PowerPoint presentation that the EPA’s legal and technical staff made to Johnson – thanks to Sen Barbara Boxer (D-CA). At the end, I’ll reprint a letter from the Terminator and (13 other Governors) sent to the EPA. As reported today by the S.F. Chronicle:

In the presentation last year, EPA staffers wrote that California could clearly demonstrate “compelling and extraordinary conditions” – the legal definition under the Clean Air Act that requires EPA to approve regulations set by the state.

“California continues to have compelling and extraordinary conditions in general (geography, climatic, human and motor vehicle populations – many such conditions are vulnerable to climate change conditions) as confirmed by several recent EPA decisions,” the staff wrote.

The staffers also told Johnson that climate scientists at the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had concluded California was at greater risk from the impacts of global warming than other states, which could justify the tougher rules.

“California exhibits a greater number of key impact concerns than other regions,” they wrote. The staffers listed all the risks that could prove the state’s case – from potential water shortages to rising sea levels affecting coastal communities to health threats from air pollution.

“Wildfires are increasing,” which could “generate particulates that can exacerbate health risk,” they wrote. “California has the greatest variety of ecosystems in the U.S.; and the most threatened and endangered species in the continental U.S.”

Nice to see the EPA staff gets this issue, even if their boss and the White House don’t. The story notes:

EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar insisted Wednesday that Johnson had not overruled his staff. He said the EPA chief is not bound by the opinions of his staff.

I guess it depends on what your definition of the word “overruled” is.

A stinging rebuttal to Johnson can be found in the text of a letter from Gov. Schwarzenegger and 13 other Governors about EPA’s denial of California’s tailpipe emissions waiver request:
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Or, actually, 12:07 PM EST.

You can listen live at www.wday.com and then click on “Listen Live” near “Hot Talk” (upper right hand corner).

I will be debating the Competitive Enterprise Institute on the mandates for CFL lightbulbs in the recently passed energy bill:

Lamp Efficiency Standards. The bill sets lamp efficiency standards for common light bulbs, requiring them to use about 20-30% less energy than present incandescent bulbs by 2012-2014 (phasing in over several years) and requiring a DOE rulemaking to set standards that will reduce energy use to no more than about 65% of current lamp use by 2020. The initial targets can be met by advanced incandescent lamps the major manufacturers are just introducing to the market using halogen capsules with infrared reflective coatings. The longer-term targets will likely be met by compact fluorescent lamps and other advanced technologies such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and very advanced incandescent lamps now in development.

Should be fun!

President George W. Bush will deliver his final State of the Union address on Monday. We can be sure he will talk about Iraq and the economy, particularly the hot topic of the moment: recession. He probably will discuss Iran and the war on terrorism. He may talk about immigration and rising oil prices, two topics he raised last year and on which there has been no progress.

But will he talk about global climate change?

On the eve of the address and in no uncertain terms, a group of the nation’s leading scientists and policy experts is advising the President that he should.

“We regret to report that the state of the nation’s climate policy is poor, and the climate and the ecosystems that depend upon it are showing increasing signs of disruption,” the group says in a statement being delivered to the White House today. We can no longer discuss the State of the Union without assessing the state of the nation’s climate.

Among the diverse signatories are two Nobel Laureates; nearly 30 mayors of U.S. cities; climate experts from 15 academic institutions including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Duke Universities; and leaders of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Scientists, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. Individuals from several foundations, think tanks, and businesses also signed.

The seven-page statement makes clear that global warming deserves much more attention in the State of the Union address than the President gave it last year, when he sent the policy world atwitter with six words — “serious challenge of global climate change”. As it turns out, those words were the high point of the Administration’s climate action agenda last year. The low point came in Bali.

Compared to the other issues the president is likely to discuss, none approaches global warming in scale, duration or significance. Recession may be dominating the attention of the White House, the candidates and Congress. But as TIME columnist Justin Fox noted this week, the recession is “just a passing phenomenon.”

“Keep that in mind when listening to those presidential candidates talk economics,” Fox wrote, “By the time one of them takes office a year from now, this year’s slump will probably be history. It’s the other stuff that he or she might actually be able to do something about.”

Among the themes in the “State of the Climate” paper are that climate change is not a distant problem and it is not simply an environmental issue.

“The early signs of climate change are appearing much more quickly than predicted,” the statement says. “These signs are not restricted to the Arctic and Antarctic. We are seeing troubling patterns emerging in the United States that are consistent with the predicted impacts of climate change.” Among them are changing precipitation patterns, Atlantic hurricane activity, the frequency and size of wildfires, diminishing snow pack, changing migratory patterns, and damage from insects, including the death of pine forests.

“Some suffering is inevitable and we must help those least able to cope,” the statement says. “But the more quickly we reduce emissions today and prepare for the consequences of emissions from the past, the less suffering there will be. Those are the realities that we must acknowledge and act upon now.”

Among the statement’s many other points are these:

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