Breathe deep...

One sentence from the New York Times for May 31 says it all with regard to the state of the air at many national parks.

On many summer mornings, the air above the asphalt in Philadelphia, New York or Washington is healthier than the air around Clingman's Dome [in Great Smoky Mountains National Park], where ridges rise to 6,643 feet.

The problem is a combination of air pollution, haze, and ozone. The Bush administration's solution is all smoke and mirrors.

In 1977, Congress passed a law to reduce haze in national parks with the goal of clean air by 2064,

and a Clinton-era version of the regulation set up a decade-by-decade schedule for improvements. No park was to be left in the haze. The new strategy, [environmentalists] argue, compromises that basic goal by allowing trading of pollution credits and averaging of air quality improvements among various parks.

Putting that bluntly, as long as some places improve, others can get worse while the pollution-lovers brag about all the "progress" they've made in "cleaning the air."

[John] Stanton[, a lawyer with Clear the Air,] said Congress has said that each park "is such a special place that it must be cleared up." He added, "Congress didn't say the E.P.A. can pick and choose, or let the market decide."

But picking and choosing, apparently, is exactly what the White House wants to do, while at the same time offering power plants a 14-year exemption from the haze rule if they comply with a different set of rules about interstate drift of pollutants, rules that unlike the haze rules do not require the use of best available technology in improving older plants.

The EPA says this is both tough and practical, arguing that there is "significant overlap" between the sources of emissions controlled by the two proposals.

I say it's like telling drivers they can go though stop signs if they agree to stop at red lights.

Footnote: The TVA must have hired out-of-work PR agents from the tobacco industry.

John Shipp, the authority's vice president of environmental policy and planning, said that the T.V.A. plant emissions are not necessarily a source of park haze.

"You can't say any particular source contributes some percentage to haze or ozone in any particular place," he said.

Can't you just hear echoes of tobacco executives saying you can't blame smoking for cancer because it's impossible to say what caused any particular case?