" The timing in this legislation is way off. I'm not willing to wait a decade longer while thousands of people die prematurely from power plant pollution. I'm also not interested in waiting even longer to tackle global climate change. Scientists say we need to radically change our energy use within 20 years to avoid potentially disastrous consequences."

The Bush Air Pollution Plan:
Weakens Current Law and Fails to Combat Global Warming

The Bush Administration's air pollution plan repeals and weakens key provisions of the Clean Air Act. An internal U.S. EPA analysis made public last year shows that, if enforced, the current Clean Air Act will deliver greater pollution reductions than those proposed by the Bush plan. The Bush plan rolls back the existing law's public health safeguards to protect local air quality, reduce toxic mercury threats, curb pollution from upwind to downwind states, and restore visibility in our national parks. The Bush plan also does nothing to curb power plant carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of global warming. The Bush plan repeals, weakens, and delays current Clean Air Act safeguards:

• Current Clean Air Act: States must clean up air pollution and provide healthy air to most citizens by 2010.

  Bush Plan: Current deadlines are repealed, allowing violations of soot and smog health standards to continue until 2018. The Bush plan allows for a 36% increase in the smog-forming pollution that cause asthma attacks, and a 50% increase in the soot-forming pollution that can cause death. Some areas are never cleaned up.

• Current Clean Air Act: Each power plant must cut mercury emissions and other air toxics by as much as 90 percent by 2008, and then further limit any unacceptable risks that remain. Power plants are the largest uncontrolled source of mercury, which threatens the health of children, expectant mothers, and other vulnerable populations.

  Bush plan: Eliminates current health protections, allowing three times more mercury pollution, and substitutes a weak program with uncertain interim reductions that is not fully implemented until 2018.

• Current Clean Air Act: Requires new power plants to install state-of-the-art pollution controls, and requires older "grandfathered" plants to install modern pollution controls when rebuilt or expanded in ways that increase their pollution output. In areas with dirty air, new or expanded plants must offset their pollution increases.

  Bush plan: Repeals these current air quality safeguards.

• Current Clean Air Act: When power plants in upwind states cause violations of air pollution health standards in downwind states, the downwind states can force those plants to cut their pollution.

  Bush plan: Effectively repeals this "state rights" provision. The Bush plan prohibits downwind states from pursuing any pollution reductions from power plants in upwind states before 2012. After 2012 the standard of proof to show an upwind contribution to downwind pollution is so great that relief may never be granted.

• Current Clean Air Act: Existing power plants must install modern pollution control equipment to curb the haze they cause in national parks and wilderness areas.

  Bush plan: Repeals the cleanup requirement and fails to deliver cleaner
  air to our parks.

• Power plants are the largest source of U.S. global warming pollution, responsible for 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. The Bush plan does nothing to reduce power plants' contribution to global warming. The plan will allow another generation of investments in power plants with excessive carbon dioxide emissions - dramatically increasing future costs for utilities and their customers when the inevitable need to curb these emissions is finally recognized.