Editorial: Clearing the air

Saturday, Oct. 14, 2006 | 8:01 a.m.

L ow-sulfur diesel fuel, which is considered among the biggest revolutions ever in motor vehicle fuels, soon will be widely available to a vast majority of buses and trucks.

This new diesel fuel has just 3 percent of the sulfur content of older diesel fuels. Sulfur - like the lead that was removed from most fuels in the 1970s - contributes to air pollution and gunks up vehicles' pollution control devices. At least 80 percent of the diesel fuel available for trucks must meet this new low-sulfur standard by Sunday.

Earlier this week, experts told The New York Times that this new fuel would enable the manufacture of cleaner-burning diesel engines that are expected to eventually cut particulate pollution by 95 percent.

And it is this pollution-reducing accomplishment that the Bush administration immediately claimed for its own. At a news conference at an Indiana diesel engine factory Tuesday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson hailed the new fuel as being orchestrated "under President Bush's leadership."

It is a nice announcement, but it is also one that is false. Planning for this sulfur-reducing regulation began in 1995, the Times reports, and it was signed into existence in December 2000 - a month before President Bush took office.

Carol M. Browner, the former EPA administrator who signed the original low-sulfur regulation, took issue with the Bush administration's claim, and rhetorically asked the Times, "The best that they can do in environmental policy is take credit for someone else's work?"

Yes, spinning issues to Bush's advantage, no matter how untrue, is one of the things that this administration does best. And, if it weren't for other people's work, the Bush administration would have no environmental policies - at least, not any that would offer improvements.