Stung by the President on Air Quality, Environmentalists Weigh Their Options
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
September 3, 2011
For environmental groups, it was the final hard slap that brought a long-troubled relationship to the brink.
In late August, the State Department gave a crucial go-ahead on a controversial pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Then on Friday, leading into the holiday weekend, the Obama administration announced without warning that it was walking away from stricter ozone pollution standards that it had been promising for three years and instead sticking with Bush-era standards.
John D. Walke, clean air director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group based in New York, likened the ozone decision to a “bomb being dropped.”
Mr. Walke and representatives of other environmental groups saw the president’s actions as brazen political sellouts to business interests and the Republican Party, which regards environmental regulations as job killers and a brick wall to economic recovery. Read the full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/science/earth/04air.html?_r=1