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Last week the Office of Management and Budget Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs published the Fall 2013 Current Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, a twice-yearly summary of regulatory priorities as determined by each executive agency.

EPA’s Fall 2013 Statement of Priorities is notable for what makes the list, but especially so for what is left off it. The agency’s priorities are:

• making a visible difference in communities across the country;
• addressing climate change and improving air quality;
• taking action on toxics and chemical safety;
• protecting water: a precious, limited resource;
• launching a new era of state, tribal and local partnership; and
• working toward a sustainable future.

The first priority—“making a visible difference in communities across the country”—sounds scary to me. I’d rather not encounter EPA meddlers like Walter Peck. Keep the green police out of my neighborhood.

EPA’s second priority—“addressing climate change and improving air quality”—is misleading, because the agency itself concedes that its climate change regulations won’t engender a discernible difference,** due to the fact that the preponderance of present and future emissions originate in other countries where EPA has no authority.

The third priority—“taking action on toxics and chemical safety”—also is cause for suspicion, given that EPA’s foremost action on toxics to date, the 2012 Mercury and Air Toxics Standard, was an absurd, politically motivated regulation that cost $10 billion/year, in order to protect a supposed population of fisherwomen who consume 200 pounds of self-caught fish, from exclusively the most polluted freshwater bodies, during their pregnancies.

The fourth priority—“protecting water: a precious, limited resource”—is, in fact, a raw power grab.

The fifth priority—“launching a new era of state, tribal and local partnership”—is Orwellian boilerplate, as it imparts the opposite of reality. In fact, this administration’s EPA has seized the States’ rightful priorities under the cooperative federalism scheme of environmental regulation created by Congress.

And the sixth priority—“ working toward a sustainable future”—is empty enviro’ mumbo-jumbo.

So, EPA’s 2013 Statement of Priorities is a mess, establishing goals that range from frightening to pointless. However, the truly noteworthy aspect of the list is what it omits: Namely, an EPA priority along the lines of “doing our job.” As I explain in a recent paper, EPA has a woeful record meeting statutory deadlines for regulatory action, which are the agency’s priorities as dictated by Congress. Since 1993, for example, 98 percent of EPA regulations (196 out of 200) pursuant to three core Clean Air Act programs were promulgated late, by an average of 2,072 days after their respective statutorily defined deadlines.

Rather than abide by the mushy list enumerated in the Unified Agenda, it would be far better if the agency gave priority to effectuating the will of the nation’s elected representatives. That is, it would be ideal if the agency deigned to do its job.

** Consider the following exchange between Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy during a September 18 House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, in which she concedes that none of EPA’s climate regulations will have a discernible impact on the climate.

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Today marks the conclusion of the 19th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Warsaw, Poland.

For the uninitiated, COPs are the preeminent global climate confab for the green glitterati. The purpose of COPs is to facilitate negotiations for a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Each annual COP is a two week affair that follows a similar pattern. During the first week, participant nations send only lower level negotiators. As the second week progresses, ever-more important diplomats and dignitaries arrive, as the discussions ratchet up. On the final Friday, the parties will deliberate through the night, so that they might produce some sort of agreement, no matter how watered down, before they leave.

[N.B. I’m not being cheeky by describing COPs thusly. Consider: I wrote the paragraph above for a newsletter that we sent out last Friday, at the end of the first week of COP-19. [Sign up for the weekly, free Cooler Heads Digest newsletter on the top right of this webpage!]. That is, the above paragraph is a week old. Today is the final Friday of COP 19. Below, I’ve pasted a headline from this morning Energy & Environment News ClimateWire (subscription required):

I was able to predict, a week ago, that today’s negotiations would last all night, yet I’m not clairvoyant. I was able to do so for a simple reason: This is what happens every year! ]

It’s been a bumpy two weeks in Warsaw. First, the coal-dependent host country held a pro-coal summit the same week as COP-19. Then, developing countries walked out. Finally, environmentalists walked out. Needless to say, agreement has been few and far between.

Nonetheless, Nature, one of the top science journals, wrote a hopeful editorial this week about the prospects for success in Warsaw. Despite the discord to date, the editorial board took solace in the low expectations that had been set for COP-19. They note that, “The goal for Warsaw this week is not an agreement, but a viable roadmap to an agreement,” and conclude, “Surely that much can be achieved.”

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Editor’s note: CEI’s Myron Ebell is at the 19^th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Warsaw, Poland. Below is his first report.

Tuesday was one of the special theme days at COP-19 in Warsaw. It was Gender Day. I couldn’t go to many of the gender-related events because there were several important sessions that were part of the official negotiating process that I wanted to attend, but I was able to attend the high-level event organized by the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The UNFCCC has adopted several resolutions on gender equality and women’s participation beginning in 2001. Last year at COP-18 in Doha, Qatar, they committed to gender balance in the Secretariat and member delegations.

The gender event on Tuesday was moderated by the executive director of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres. She began by saying that we should keep our feet on the ground but raise our eyes to the stars. She asked the speakers to tell the audience (of several hundred people) what their dreams were and to talk from their hearts and souls rather than their minds.

Bianca Jagger’s remarks were low key and modest. She said that her dream was ending violence against women. Lakshmi Puri, deputy director of UN Women, said that women were more adversely affected by climate change, but could do more to stop it than men.  Helen Clark, the head of the UN Development Programme and former prime minister of New Zealand, seconded that and said that the climate justice agenda included universal access to sustainable energy.

Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and former UN high commissioner on human rights, noted that there were more than a billion people without access to electricity and more than two billion whose meals were cooked, usually by women, on open fires. She somehow thought that “doing the right thing on climate” will somehow relieve this widespread energy poverty by creating a more just world with less inequality. She added that fossil fuels are a stranded asset as people have come to realize that, “like asbestos, they are too dangerous to use.”

Tara Holonen, the former president of Finland, introduced the new Environment and Gender Index. It ranks 72 nations according to six performance categories. The gender equality measurements don’t seem to have any connection to the environmental quality measurements, so the index makes little sense. The index was produced by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which was once a respectable science and conservation group. The IUCN now describes itself as “a leader on gender issues in the environmental arena.” (www.EnvironmentGenderIndex.org)

A young Australian climate activist was invited from the audience to join the panel when one of the speakers was unable to attend. She said that the sole reason she fights for climate justice is to improve the lot of poor women in the developing world.

The highlight of this gender event, which was only one among many held on this special Gender Day, was the singing of a song composed especially for the event. It was sung magnificently by Elizabeth Njorge, who heads a foundation in Kenya that is dedicated to bringing art and music education to some of the poorest children in Kenya. Titled Vision 50/50, the song’s chorus reads: “We have a dream, a dream of hopes to turn a page that marks a golden age, A greener course, a greener course for planet Earth.” Note that the lyricist refrained from calling it Mother Earth, although the word “sustainable” is used in one of the verses.