Playing Politics in the Snow

As the Bush administration rolled back many of the Clinton administration’s efforts to make the air less likely to cause lung disease, to save the forests from plunder and otherwise to protect people and the environment, the excuse often was that the previous decisions weren’t based on “good science.”

And if the experts support the science underlying a Clinton decision? Apparently Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton sees that as an impossibility.

The issue is the National Park Service rule adopted in 2000 to ban snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. It’s an excellent rule.

Snowmobiles are noisy and polluting. Users of these machines have millions of acres of national forest adjacent to the parks in which to frolic. And the Park Service plans to offer over-the-snow buses for anyone who wants to see Old Faithful in the winter.

But the Bush administration reopened the issue at the behest of snowmobile manufacturers and allied businesses and suggested alternatives to the ban, including outright repeal.

The Environmental Protection Agency was asked to comment, just as it was during years of study leading up to the ban. An EPA deputy regional administrator in Denver announced in late April that the agency continued to support the ban because pollution coming from the machines could violate air quality standards and pose health threats to humans and wildlife. This position is, as an EPA official put it, “entirely consistent with the stance the EPA has had through this entire process.” Good science, it appears, did not get altered by the outcome of the 2000 presidential election.

Alas, the official’s letter announcing the decision took the normal route straight to the Park Service, reportedly catching EPA head Christie Whitman by surprise--and, hence, Norton too. Norton is said to have fumed. Whitman since has ordered employees throughout the country to route such matters through her office.

If this is so that science can be put to the political test, the Bush administration might note that the snowmobile ban is widely popular, except with riders and the machines’ makers and others who think it will hurt business. The ban is, in other words, good public policy and good politics. And good science is still good science.