Written by
Paul C. Barton
By PAUL C. BARTON
Gannett Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - In a year when controversy has surrounded the Environmental Protection Agency like never before, it has had no bigger defender than Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Pro-business groups and Republicans criticize the EPA as an out of control agency that inhibits job creation through excessive regulations on businesses and farms that achieve minimal environmental gain at excessive cost.
Especially controversial have been proposals directed at power plants and other industrial facilities to limit hazards from greenhouse gases, coal ash, mercury and other toxic substances.
Even cement plants have drawn the EPA's scrutiny, as have hospitals, universities and farmers who don't adequately control their dust.
The Wall Street Journal has accused the EPA of "turning a regulatory fire hose" at U.S. employers.
In response, environmental groups such as the League of Conservation Voters have labeled this Congress, especially the House of Representatives, as one of the most "anti-environmental" in history.
Even the controversy over payroll tax cuts turned into a squabble over environmental policy as House Republicans tried to attach measures to block the EPA's intentions in many areas.
The main protector of the initiatives of the embattled agency and its director -- Lisa Jackson -- has been the 71-year-old Boxer, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
According to the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental watchdog group, the House has held more than 190 votes this year on measures environmental groups decry. That's almost as many votes as the democratically controlled Senate has held on all issues combined.
Boxer calls attention constantly to Republican environmental proposals coming over from the House and works with Senate Democratic leaders to weed them before the bills go farther.
"Clearly, she has been outspoken and strong on every environmental issue. We wish we had 99 more just like her," said Scott Slesinger, legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Her longtime interest in environmental issues, Boxer said, stems from raising children and knowing how pollution can harm their health.
But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a different view, giving Boxer a lifetime score of 30 percent on issues important to businesses, the fifth-lowest number assigned to any member of the Senate in its latest rankings.
As the U.S. economy limps along, EPA regulators need to be bridled, not enabled, business groups say.
"As manufacturers try to recover from one the worst recessions of our nation's history, it is imperative that the EPA slow down and review the regulations that it has in place and those that are not yet finalized to ensure predictability within the regulatory realm," the National Association of Manufacturers said in a statement.
Boxer responds that job creation and environmental protection should not be considered mutually exclusive.
"Put simply, if you can't breathe, you can't work, and if anyone in Congress tries to move toward dirty air policies, I will take it to the American people and do everything in my power to stop them," Boxer said during a committee hearing this year.
Meanwhile, California Democrat argues that "clean" technologies offer one of the main paths to creating jobs. She cites figures from the Pew Charitable Trusts showing that from 1998 to 2007, clean-energy investments created 125,000 jobs in California, generating employment 15 times faster than the overall state economy.
The environmental issues where Boxer is especially vocal are carbon emissions and global climate change.
Amid the din of Congress' end-of-the-year rush this month, Boxer was one of the few to pay attention to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa. She even sent staff to Durban.
The week before, she held a press conference to discuss what she sees as increasing domestic evidence of the phenomenon, including such events this year as:
- 10 weather-related disasters in the United States causing $1 billion or more in damages apiece
- Historic flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers that damaged thousands of homes and vast amounts of farmland
- More than 800 tornadoes across the Midwest and Southeast
"The evidence is mounting all around us that climate change has already caused damage to our environment," Boxer says. "The trend is clear, and scientists around the world are concerned about what is happening to our planet." She said the situation "demanded immediate international action."
But Boxer's positions on climate-change legislation have garnered criticism even from some in her own party.
Sen. Max Baucus, a key Democratic moderate from Montana, said of her 2009 bill to to cap carbon emissions: "We cannot afford the unmitigated impacts of climate change, but we also cannot afford the unmitigated effects of legislation."
Meanwhile, Patrick J. Michaels, head of climate change studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, is one of those who contend a "sky is falling" attitude on climate change is unjustified.
The "sensitivity" of temperature change to carbon emissions is not nearly as severe as many in the global warming community, contend, he said.
"That doesn't mean there is no global warming," Michaels said. But is happening at far, far slower a pace than those such as Boxer contend, he added.
"It would be foolish to undertake a drastic program to reduce carbon dioxide," he said, adding it would also prove politically unpopular as the public realized the cost.
Gannett Washington Bureau