In yet another appalling, and seemingly antithetical move, the Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that applications to build new coal power plants don’t need to consider their greenhouse gas output.  Excuse me?  Shouldn’t that be the first thing the polluters should have to do?  This will undoubtedly pave the way for the last-minute approval of coal plants before Bush leaves office, ensuring that he leaves the White House as dirty as possible.  And it gets better; according to the New York Times, EPA administrator Stephen Johnson ludicrously argues:

carbon dioxide is not a pollutant to be regulated when approving power plants. He cited “sound policy considerations.

The current concerns over global climate change should not drive E.P.A. into adopting an unworkable policy of requiring emission controls” in these cases.

No, I’m pretty sure that concerns over climate change should be encouraging the EPA to help control carbon emissions.

takepart by learning what you can do to help solve the climate crisis, since it seems the EPA are falling down on the job.

Related: Inconvenient Truth of the Day

Photo: davipt’s flickr photostream (Creative Commons)