Bush, EPA Won't Touch Emissions

Regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will have to wait until President Bush is out of office, the EPA announced today. Instead, the agency will say it needs months of further public comment to make any decision. The statement is the end result of a protracted White House effort to tone down the agency’s findings, the Washington Post reports.

“They argued that this increase in regulation should be on the next president's record,” said one participant in the interagency debate. The Supreme Court demanded a ruling on the subject more than a year ago, and initial reports said unequivocally that more regulation was called for. But the administration ignored those reports, edited testimony, and changed computer models, a Post investigation found. (More Bush administration stories.)