Thom Hartmann: Myron Ebell is with us, back with us, a regular guest. He is the director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, CEI.org. Myron, welcome back to the show.
Myron Ebell: Thanks for having me, Thom. It's good to hear your voice.
Thom Hartmann: Thank you, I've got to say, you guys have really done it. I mean, I am so astounded that you were able to get CBS News, and looks like they were pretty much the only ones. New York Times there one of their blogs. But you've got CBS News with a straight face to report that a research paper that you guys had put out by Alan Carlin in the EPA, who's not a climate scientist, he's an economist, that there was this dissenting word in the EPA. And yesterday I was listening to Sean Hannity and he was like, "can you believe this? The Obama administration is censoring its own EPA because they issued a report that says there's no global warming.' It's astounding how you guys did this. I tip my hat to you in awe even though I'm horrified by it.
Myron Ebell: Well, you know Thom, we're a very small group. We've got about five people working on global warming. One of them who works part-time because he's our general counsel is Sam Kazman and he's the one who got this out. I don't think we got it on CBS News. I think, you know, sometimes stories take off and people start paying attention to them.
Thom Hartmann: Well actually, CBS News ran from your press release.
Myron Ebell: Well, you know, I think that's great and it just shows the wonderful prose of Sam Kazman, in our media department, Christine Hall.
Thom Hartmann: You're also, if your staff is that small, I mean you guys have got about a two million dollar a year budget. You're getting money from Amaco, CSS
, Phillip Morris, Pfizer, Texaco, Ford and all these foundations, all these right-wing foundations.
Myron Ebell: I wish we were. Actually our budget last year was 5.2 million and this year will be a little bit lower.
Thom Hartmann: What I could do with that.
Myron Ebell: But, yeah, well, you know, look at NRDC or Environmental Defense Fund or, you know, I mean, they're 40, 60 million dollars a year.
Thom Hartmann: But let's talk, let's talk for a moment, OK, well, let's talk for a moment about this, because I know you actually want to come on and defend this thing. Alan Carlin, who is an economist, works at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics. Nobody asked him to, it was unsolicited, he wrote up a paper, 70 some-odd page paper, I think according to your press release, it was titled "CO2 they call it pollution, we call life", is that right?
Myron Ebell: No, that's obviously a television ad that we once put out on YouTube.
Thom Hartmann: Oh, okay, okay. All right. So ...
Myron Ebell: I, yeah, you could you could find a draft copy of his report on our website and you can get the real title.
Thom Hartmann: Right, but he's basically citing the usual array of global warming deniers: Joe D'Aleo, Don Easterbrook, William Gray, Christopher Monckton, Fred Singer, Roy Spencer. You know, all these guys who work with our old friend Marc Morano from Senator Inhofe's office to deny that the atmosphere is deteriorating and why, why are you doing this this way? And feeding in what frankly, no offense, seems to be a really deceptive fashion, suggesting that the EPA release this or that the EPA is trying to suppress it when actually neither is the case?
Myron Ebell: Well, you know, I'd say I'd, first of all, I say, you know, I think there's a double standard here. I think that a huge amount of press, including the front page of the New York Times, was made about uh Phil Cooney at the Council of Environmental Quality in the White House during the Bush years was accused of suppressing science when in fact all he was doing was his job to do interagency review of not science documents but administration policy documents and in fact he tried to correct the scientific statements in the interagency.
Thom Hartmann: But he's not a scientist.
Myron Ebell: No, hang on, hang on, hang on. He tried to replace the, he tried to suggest, he said we need to replace this statement with the more authoritative one from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's third assessment report which is well footnoted and well-documented unlike this statement that we've gotten from EPA. So he got tremendous flak as being somebody trying to suppress science when in fact he was just producing a policy report not a science report and he was trying to improve it from a scientific standpoint by replacing faulty references with those from the IPCC's third assessment report. Now, that got huge play and I imagine you might have been one of them.
Now, let me explain what I think is the real case with the EPA. The previous administrator during the Bush administration, Steve Johnson, a career EPA guy who'd been nominated by President Bush to be his final director of EPA in his last year or so. Steve Johnson put out an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to solicit public comment on whether and how the EPA could regulate or should regulate greenhouse gas emissions. And that received hundreds and hundreds of comments, many, many of them very detailed, on all sides of the issue from experts from industry, from environmental groups, from legal firms, all kinds of expert comments, very detailed.
Lisa Jackson on April sixteenth made the endangerment finding: she said I am going to make that finding that that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare and then can be regulated by the Clean Air Act. Now, what did they say when they when she made that finding? That they had not gone through the comments in the advanced notice of proposed rulemaking that had been received. They had not responded to them. They had not taken account of them and they had no intention to. And if people wanted, who had commented earlier - that is, last year - wanted to have their comments considered they would have to resubmit them for this comment period. Now, that seems to me to be right there they are breaking the law. Now, secondly...
Thom Hartmann: Well...
Myron Ebell: Secondly, now, let me let me get to this guy Carlin. Let me get to this guy Carlin.
Thom Hartmann: OK. All right.
Myron Ebell: It is usual for different offices of the EPA to offer their expert analysis of every, every rulemaking that is proposed. So every office can do it. And every professional staff member can do it. That is standard operating procedure over many decades at the EPA. And let me tell you...
Thom Hartmann: No, I don't disagree. I just think it's amazing that...
Myron Ebell: But hold it, but Thom, let me tell you. Look, Alan Carlin is not just some EPA employee. This guy, let me tell you..
Thom Hartmann: No, he's an economist with the National Center for Environmental Economics. I'm just amazed that you guys got it in.
Myron Ebell: No, no, no, no, Thom, Thom, Thom, look. This guy is not a political activist. If you look at, search him on the web or look at the FEC reports, I don't think he's ever contributed to a candidate. He doesn't, and listen to this, he has a bachelor's in physics from Caltech, a PhD in economics...
Thom Hartmann: Myron, stop filibustering me, would you please.
Myron Ebell: No, no, let me finish, let me finish.
Thom Hartmann: Please, this...
Myron Ebell: Let me say one more sentence. And he's been at EPA since 1971. He knows how things work there and he was outraged by this.
Thom Hartmann: Myron, you can find crackpots and cranks in any institution, particularly a large government agency, absolutely. I mean, this guy if he's quoting Fred Singer, he's got no credibility in my world.
We're just about out of time now and there is one area that I was hoping we could talk about because I suspect we're actually going to agree on it.
Myron Ebell: OK.
Thom Hartmann: The cap and trade bill. I am astounded that after the Supreme Court said to all of us; said the federal government, said the executive branch, you have the right, and to Congress, you have the right to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, that it was written into this cap and trade bill that Congress no longer has that right. Your thoughts on that.
Myron Ebell: Well, the Congress has preempted the Clean Air Act. You know, what I agree about this Waxman-Markey bill that was passed very narrowly last week, Thom, is, and I think even you would agree with this, because I was just listening to your ad for Jim Hightower and his book against big corporate interests controlling America. This Waxman-Markey bill, it may have been well intended to begin, with I don't question the motives of the environmental groups wanting to control greenhouse gas emissions, it's just become a big corporate pay off.
Thom Hartmann: I know.
Myron Ebell: Every big corporation of America is in it to get...
Thom Hartmann: Especially the coal companies.
Myron Ebell: Oh, and the oil companies and the auto companies and the chemical companies and the utilities and the PepsiCo and Caterpillar and, I mean, this thing is such a wreck, I think everybody, all well-meaning people on all sides of the ? ought to say, 'hey, let's start all over, this is just insane'. Just paying hundreds of billions of dollars to big corporations, it's insane.
Thom Hartmann: You know, I never thought I would agree with Myron Ebell, with the Competitive Enterprise Institute but, and probably for very different reasons. I mean, if we're going to start from scratch I would not give away any of the credits...
Myron Ebell: I agree. I agree.
Thom Hartmann: And you'd them all away.
Myron Ebell: It should all be auctioned. It should all be auctioned, Thom.
Thom Hartmann: Right, right. Myron Ebell, CEI.org. You can read all about it.
Myron Ebell: Thank you, Thom.
Thom Hartmann: Thank you very much, Myron.
Myron Ebell: Thanks, Thom.
Thom Hartmann: Good talking with you today.
Transcribed by Sue Nethercott.
