or another cave?

How quickly the climate changed for Obama’s EPA after his shellacking. Amid threatened budget curbs and aggressive investigation of the EPA by incoming congressional Republicans, but before they have even taken charge certain sets of rules governing ozone smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers that were set to take effect in a matter of weeks are now under further study and may wait years.

The move to delay the rules, announced this week by the Environmental Protection Agency, will leave in place policies set by President George W. Bush. President Obama ran for office promising tougher standards, and the new rules were set to take effect over the next several weeks.    

Now, the agency says, it needs until July 2011 to further analyze scientific and health studies of the smog rules and until April 2012 on the boiler regulation.NYTimes

The smog rules according to the EPA would have saved thousands of lives per year however with costs to business and municipalities estimated to be $90 billion annually The boiler rule would have limited industrial boiler, heater and solid waste incinerator emissions of mercury and other dangerous pollutants by half.

Groups including the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute have called the proposed range of ozone standards too aggressive. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the incoming chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has listed the rules among “job-killing” EPA policies that he said he will seek to turn back.

 

However as recently as this past September EPA administrator Lisa Jackson  was saying this about industry scare tactics

“Industry lobbyists have a long and storied history of doomsday scenarios about what EPA actions would mean across the countryside. They have never proven true”