Carol Browner, the latest Clinton administration retread to be tapped by Barack Obama, will serve in the newly created and still undefined role of White House “energy czar.” If her statements earlier this year are any indication, she also will serve as court jester.
Offering her opinion of what a new president should do on Day One, Browner said — straight-faced — that “it is very important for the next administration to restore the role and independence of science in decision-making.” Yet as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Browner was notorious for ignoring scientific analysis unless it supported her agenda.
And her agenda was regulation, regulation, and more regulation — merely for the sake of regulating. For instance, Browner ordered Virginia to reduce the amount of ambient nitrogen oxide, not because levels were anywhere near dangerous, but because that was the only pollutant that had not declined in the past 25 years.
At Browner’s behest, the Food and Drug Administration planned to ban anti-asthma inhalers because the EPA considered it more important to get rid of devices that release trace amounts of chlorofluorocarbons than to allow 30 million Americans to breathe easily. Public outcry, not science, caused the EPA to back off.
As head of the EPA, Browner had the Justice Department sue Toyota for $58 billion because of an alleged emission-control violation, i.e., the “check engine” light did not come on often enough. Never mind that Toyota had the highest-rated emissions-control systems of any major automaker, and that there was zero evidence that fuel vapors were actually leaking. Browner demanded changes that would increase the number of false-positive alerts. If you’ve ever been inconvenienced by taking your car in for repair because the “check engine” light is illuminated, only to learn that the problem is you did not screw on the gas cap tightly enough, thank Carol Browner.
While at the EPA, Browner also cracked down on the trucking industry with a tremendously expensive requirement that diesel fuel reduce its sulfur content by 97 percent. Her justification for ordering reconfigurations of trucks and refineries that would have made every product on store shelves more expensive? “Soot and smog pollution are scientifically associated with 15,000 deaths annually, and a million cases of respiratory problems each year,” Browner said. “They are also responsible for some 400,000 cases of asthma attacks every year, including thousands of aggravated cases of asthma, especially in children.”
The Centers for Disease Control refuted her, and researchers said that while asthma is indeed on the rise, air pollution was not to blame. Common sense indicates as much. If air pollution were the culprit, asthma rates hardly would have risen as air has become cleaner. Browner ignored the scientists.
When Ethyl Corporation asked in 1994 to sell its octane-enhancing fuel additive HiTEC 3000 in this country, the EPA refused. Browner said emissions from the manganese-based product might pose a health hazard, ignoring the fact that the product had been sold in Canada for 17 years with no ill effects — or that Americans ingest far more manganese from a banana (230 micrograms) or a cup of tea (1,200 micrograms) than the 0.4 micrograms of manganese in daily inhalation.
Among Browner’s most absurd rulings at EPA was the proposal to ban chlorine, used as a disinfectant in 98 percent of municipal water treatment, in the absence of any evidence that chlorine leads to cancer or birth defects. Indeed, at the time of Browner’s proposal, Peru was suing the United States for classifying chlorine as a possible carcinogen because then Peru removed chlorine from its water supply, and the resulting cholera epidemic killed thousands. Was that scientific enough for her?
Browner’s record at the EPA contains a common thread: the barefaced rejection of scientific heft. Like other environmental extremists, she prefers histrionics to hard data. Browner is right; the Obama administration should employ scientific analysis to craft environmental regulation. But if that indeed becomes a litmus test for the energy czar, she may have talked herself right out of a job.
Examiner columnist Melanie Scarborough’s column appears on Mondays.
