Creating Their Own Reality

CREATING THEIR OWN REALITY....The Bush White House has apparently adopted a bold new strategy for denying that greenhouse gases are an environmental threat: refuse to open email from the EPA that says they are. College freshmen around the world are rejoicing that one of their favorite excuses for avoiding class assignments now has official sanction.

Having failed to get the White House to read its original report, the EPA has decided to punt on fourth and long:

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Both documents, as prepared by the E.P.A., "showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases," one of the senior E.P.A. officials said. "That's not what the administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can't work."