"Sound Science"

Because I chose to read the New York Times this morning on the subway instead of the Washington Post, I missed this article that Chris Mooney points to about the EPA's new mercury regulations.

The EPA came out with their new cap-and-trade rule last week decked out in their best "sound science" outfit:

"This rule is about public health, and this rule is protective given what we know about mercury and how and why we get exposed to it," EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said yesterday.

It turns out that Ms. Bergman misspoke. The rule wasn't about what the EPA knows about mercury, but rather about what the EPA wanted to tell us about mercury.

When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff.

What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion.

That analysis estimated health benefits 100 times as great as the EPA did, but top agency officials ordered the finding stripped from public documents, said a staff member who helped develop the rule. Acknowledging the Harvard study would have forced the agency to consider more stringent controls, said environmentalists and the study's author.

The article goes on to catch the EPA in a pretty blatant lie (although the reporter doesn't call it that, of course) about why they disregarded the study when promulgating the new rule.

I'm quickly running out of outrage when it comes to situations like this. The Bush administration isn't going to stop pulling this kind of crap as long as they're in charge. But what they are doing is wrong, and it's hurting people — that is the important thing to remember.