The EPA and Me
Last week Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson addressed the issue of chemical regulation at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. The speech, posted on the EPA's website, succinctly addressed some of the EPA concerns we've had over the years at Acronym Required. First, Jackson reviewed the EPA's accomplishments in the last eight months:
"[A]s EPA Administrator, I was proud to be able to bring the California waiver back from the dead - more Obama environmental health care...We've hit the ground running on priority issues: first-ever national initiatives to confront climate change; restoring the rightful place of science as our cornerstone and rebuilding public trust in our work; revitalizing protections from toxic chemicals, smog, water pollution; and expanding the conversation on all of these issues, so that communities most affected by environmental degradation have a voice."
All these things we like. Jackson cited the EPA's dedication to science, public trust, protection from chemicals, smog, pollution, and she promised to listen to affected communities. Of course she listed these things as both short-term accomplishments as well as long term goals because quite a few of these "accomplishments" aren't quite accomplished yet -- but oh well. Her speech, anyway, followed the goals she set out for the EPA. She warmed the audience up with her likable personality and her biography of typical Obama-era public trust credentials -- dedicated, hard working family, public service orientation, significantly accomplished career.
And how she spoke to our concerns! She talked about about the EPA's recent response to the Supreme Court's endangerment finding. She recounted her mother's losses in Hurricane Katrina and how it affected her attitude towards public service. We covered Katrina (here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here). She spoke of the failure of the Toxic Substance Chemical Act to adequately protect us from chemicals, which we last wrote about here. She spoke about bisphenol A, a popular topic at AR -- one of our latest posts is here.
The guts of her talk involved chemical safety and again she spoke to us. Evaluation of risks must be based on risks, not economics, she said, eluding to cost-benefit analysis debates. Jackson asserted the EPA's need for authority to take action when necessary to enforce the rules. She spoke of the mishaps of Love Canal and Superfund sites, reassuring gestures since people like Cass Sunstein, head of OIRA, has disconcertingly denied the toxic dangers of Love Canal (Chapter 4: "Risk and Reason", Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002). Jackson noted the uneven burden on the EPA over industry to generate and pay for information and resources. We agree, the agencies are overburdened.
The EPA and Everyone
However, while at first buoyed by Jackson's upbeat announcements and the pleasant departure from the Bush EPA's Administrator Johnson, as I read on I began to question my naively egocentric notion that Jackson spoke to me, to us. Indeed, what will be the place of science? Should science really be the "cornerstone" of public policy, as she said? No, despite what many scientists clamor, it neither can nor should be. Granted, this very real point is too subtle for her speech, but she reiterated the very popular sentiment to approving nods, I'm sure, from the crowd in San Francisco.
But wait, before your applaud her endorsement of science defining public policy. Further along in her speech, she brought the point up again, but subtly changed it, saying that Americans wondered whether EPA decisions were guided by "science and law". Appealing to lawyers in the crowd, perhaps. But law is different from science, and with different outcomes often at odds with environmental science -- as anyone who follows the Supreme Court decisions on science will know. Here, the Supreme Court doesn't really understand the environmental argument that the Navy and whales can co-exist while national security is insured. Here we talked about legally influenced decision that forsook whales, as well as the legal finaglings of the Exxon Valdez settlement. The EPA under Bush used the law to effectively stall in every direction on the environment. Use science to inform policy? Yes. Use the law as needed? Yes. But, in our edgy post-Bush, trying not to be cynical phase, we'd prefer them separated by periods not conjunctions.
The EPA's Public Relations Jambalaya
The more I read, the more Jackson's speech looked like a veritable public relations jambalaya. She spoke to those committed to wetlands, spotted owls, to asthma sufferers, climate change, to those concerned about coal and gas emissions, to the Clean Air Act, to trash incineration, dioxins, pesticides, green chemistry, research, unions, medical professionals, public health groups, industry, environmentalism, to those who want jobs, fast food packaging, to unborn children, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and postal workers, as well as everyone who emails public comments to the EPA or who's concerned about health care and health.
It sounds like public relations to me. Not that we don't want to believe in the EPA's intentions. And the EPA should be far more visible with its message. But we know that promises on a podium cannot foretell the outcome of all the very hard policy work that needs to be done before something can be called an accomplishment.
We felt like we had our expectations in line when we reported on Obama's ambitious announcements for the environment, in which we jestingly placed the fairy and wand image to the right above. Our realism last November (no, not cynicism), assured that we were not disappointed with the Obama administration as so many others now are. We know that Obama administration speeches are not promises -- they're just speeches.
So we see Jackson's speech as a marketing tool, and conversation generator but not a public policy statement. The goals of business were largely missing from the speech, perhaps because business doesn't need reassuring or because they're already sitting at the EPA's table. (Cynical or realistic?)
In keeping with the goal to restore public trust and provide information, after the speech, the EPA sent out another press release about Jackson's talk. "Leaders Praise EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson's Plans for Chemical Reform", the agency applauded.
