Playing Stall Ball On Clean Air

Frank O'Donnell

May 17, 2007

Frank O'Donnell is president of Clean Air Watch, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization aimed at educating the public about clean air and the need for an effective Clean Air Act.

Several decades ago, a popular strategy emerged in college basketball known as the “four corners” offense.

It was a stall tactic—made famous by the University of North Carolina—used to retain a lead by holding onto the ball until the clock ran out.

President Bush has borrowed this stall-ball strategy as a way to delay efforts by California and other states to reduce global warming pollution from motor vehicles.

The Double-Dribbler-in-Chief rolled out the plan this week, ordering the EPA to pass the ball back and forth with three cabinet departments before settling on any plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The executive order demanded that EPA seek “concurrence” from the other departments, with the White House Office of Management and Budget and the industry-friendly Council on Environmental Quality supervising the game.

In other words, the White House wrapped the EPA in a straitjacket of bureaucratic process designed to prevent fast-break action.

“This is a complicated legal and technical matter, and it's going to take time to fully resolve,” said the president, declaring he wanted some answers by the end of 2008—that is, a few weeks before he leaves office.

Why now this presidential proclamation? (It came more than a month after the Supreme Court rebuffed an earlier stall tactic and said the Clean Air Act gives EPA authority to limit greenhouse gases.)

For one thing, this preemptive strike obviously was aimed at diverting attention from the same-day opening arguments in a lawsuit by 11 states and several environmental groups against pitifully weak Bush fuel economy standards for SUVs and pickup trucks. The administration rules would increase fuel economy by a mere mile per gallon over the next several years.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown, the lead plaintiff in the case, stood on the courthouse steps decrying the "pathetic and illegal" standards. 

Brown is also playing a role in the second event that prompted the new Bush strategy: he’s scheduled to appear at an EPA hearing next week on California’s request to enforce its own standards that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles by 30 percent.

California adopted these landmark standards after a careful, several-year review, and 11 other states have followed suit.  But in order for these standards to be legally enforceable, the EPA must grant its permission.

This ought to be a legal layup. The EPA has granted similar requests by California to enforce tougher vehicle standards more than 40 times in the past three decades, and California has put together an impressive argument why the feds should do it again. 

California applied for permission to enforce the standards way back in 2005, but the Bush administration refused to take the request out of the inbox, despite a full-court press by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. An EPA insider confided to me that the administration was hoping the Supreme Court would back the Bush do-nothing stance on global warming, thus giving them an excuse to dismiss the California request.

Having lost at the Supreme Court, Team Bush rebounded with another game plan to run out the clock. It looks pretty predictable: stall for as long as possible, then (after California presses the issue in court) perhaps reject the California plan in favor of a much weaker national approach.

“We are concerned that this is a recipe for delay… and denial of our [request]," said Linda Adams, secretary of the California EPA. "We are concerned that this is a stalling tactic."

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow tried to explain the new presidential pivot:

"The question is: do you try to set up a mandatory system or do you try to set up an innovation-based system?" Snow said. "The president prefers innovation."

And intentional fouls.

The NCAA ultimately took the four corners offense out of basketball by instituting the shot clock. Congress could end the delays here. But the key gatekeeper in the House of Representatives, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., is a staunch auto industry defender. And Dingell reiterated this week that he intends to protect the industry’s interests. Based on the President’s footwork this week, Dingell won’t be alone.