Air pollution dropped significantly under Bush

Fox News:

As the Obama administration considers further steps to fight air pollution, a recent report from a Washington think tank shows that air quality in the United States has improved significantly over the last decade.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research analyzed data collected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and concluded that levels of numerous gases linked with air pollution have fallen off since 2001.

Among the findings: Carbon monoxide decreased by 39 percent, ozone by 6 percent, and sulfur dioxide by 32 percent.

"Pick any category you want and pollution levels are generally lower than they were seven years ago," said Steven Hayward, the policy analyst who authored the report, titled "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators," for the conservative think tank.

"(Environmental groups) said air pollution was out of control, but this was always more about politics than it was fact," Hayward said.

...

President George W. Bush drew the ire of environmental groups throughout his eight years in the White House, perhaps the loudest in 2003 when he announced that he would end a Clean Air Act program that required older power plants, refineries and industrial sites to install pollution control devices when they expanded their operations.

But in looking over the data on air quality from the Bush years, Hayward notes that levels of most air pollutants decreased at a faster rate than they did during the Clinton administration.

"Mostly of it's technological change. Quite a bit of it's been forced by regulation, but a lot of it has been the marketplace," Hayward said. "The EPA has models that project an 80 percent decline in auto emissions. Nothing Bush could have done was going to change that."

...

Jeff Holmsted, a high-ranking official at the EPA from 2001-2005 and now an attorney with the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, acknowledged that the decrease in air pollution over the last eight years owes much to efforts of past administrations. But he called the statistics a vindication of Bush's environmental policy, which he said did away with cumbersome regulations while still protecting the environment.

...

The environmental wackos will never give the Bush administration credit for cleaning up the environment. They are more interested in the symbolism of Kyoto than the reality of what was accomplished. I think the differences that would really surprise them is measuring the US accomplishment against the Europeans who actually signed on to Kyoto. That is a comparison they choose to ignore while they continue to criticize President Bush.