The December issue of the Washington Monthly has an informative article on the the fight over the Clear Skies Initiative, subtitled "Why enviros can't admit that Bush's Clear Skies initiative isn't half bad." In the article, U.S. News and World Report contributing editor David Whitman explains how an initiative initially supported by both industry and environmentalists came to find itself in the crosshairs of both sides.

Clear Skies is mostly known for its attempt to further reduce emissions of several air pollutants via cap-and-trade. As Whitman contends, it was proposed as a trade-off. If industry would agree to Clear Skies, then the EPA and environmentalists would go along with changing the draconian rules on New Source Review, which force old power plants that wish to upgrade their facilities to meet all of the command-and-control technologies of a brand new plant. Whitman asserts that getting emission limits for carbon dioxide were also on the table in the negotiations.

According to Whitman, the deal fell apart when the perfect became the enemy of the good. Attorneys in EPA's enforcement division, who liked new source review, left their jobs to demonize Clear Skies proponents. The United Mine Workers undermined the legislation because of worries that fuel switching from coal to natural gas would cost coal mining jobs. And finally, environmentalists went on the attack because there was no carbon dioxide cap.

Whitman then says that a slide from a Powerpoint presentation gave environmentalists the misinformation they needed to bring the program down. An EPA presentation to sell the program to industry as more relaxed than the current Clean Air Act regulations escaped into environmentalists' hands. Even though the program would require more stringent reductions, but achieve them through less costly means, the environmentalists claimed that Clear Skies was weakening existing laws. This was patently false, but the misleading EPA Powerpoint slide allowed the characterization to succeed.

Whitman goes on to explain how when an environmental group did question the ruling orthodoxy, they were clubbed back into line by the rest of the environmental establishment.

Whitman also takes to task libertarian allies of the administration, citing in particular the Property Research and Environment Center. I assume he actually means the Property and Environment Research Center or PERC in Bozeman, Montana --- where I am affiliated as a scholar. Whitman contends that PERC blasted Clear Skies as "burdensome, costly regulation." I further assume he is referring to PERC's 2002 midterm report card on the administration as the 2004 report card made little mention of Clear Skies. In that report card, PERC was rather harsh on Clear Skies, giving the program a D for its efforts. This is indeed a harsh grade. (In fact, I imagine that with an overall grade of C- in 2002 and C+ in 2004, the Administration might take Mr. Whitman's assessment of PERC as an ally to be a questionable one.)

In its assessment of Clear Skies, PERC noted that cap-and-trade was a step in the right direction, but it was worried that insufficient assessments had been done regarding the benefits of the tougher regulations when compared to the higher costs of the additional regulation. When looking at the overall picture, the PERC report cards seemed to like the policy of moving toward cap-and-trade but not if the cost for such a move entailed extensive new regulations that create more costs than benefits. PERC did give the Administration's proposed changes to New Source Review a B+ in 2002 and spoke highly of cap-and-trade in its 2004 report. Hence, the devil is (as always) in the details.

All in all, Whitman's history of how Clear Skies became unjustly demonized is an informative and educational one. Whitman does a good job of reminding that good politics and good policy are often in conflict. According to Whitman, "The battle over Clear Skies has shaped up as a classic Washington tale of a creditable endeavor hopelessly mismanaged by its sponsor, demagogued by its opponents, and tainted from the start by the administration's well-earned reputation as handmaidens of industry." The result, writes Whitman, is that, "The resulting gridlock could delay attempts to clean up the environment and cost thousands of Americans their lives."

But Whitman also needs to ask, how many lives might be lost because of the increased costs of extending regulations? When power plants pass the costs on to consumers, some of the poor will have to decide between heating their homes and feeding their families. Lives will be lost there, too. Thus, whether Clear Skies is ultimately a good policy depends on what it is traded for at the political bargaining table and how it is implemented. That is not just a matter of the perfect being the enemy of the good, that is a question of whether the good even exists.

UPDATE: Grist has its own comments on the Whitman article here.