Sun, Jun 29, 2008 (2:09 a.m.)

Last year the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to determine whether greenhouse gases are a danger either to human health or to the environment.

The EPA reached its conclusion in December and e-mailed a document to the White House explaining that greenhouse gases are pollutants that the government should control.

But in an act of outright defiance, Bush administration officials refused to open the EPA’s e-mail, effectively allowing the agency’s court-ordered conclusion to linger for six months in an electronic no man’s land where it had no official status, The New York Times reported.

Last week the EPA released a weakened, Bush-approved version of its original opinion. Rather than saying something must be done about greenhouse gases, the EPA’s conclusion now merely declares that greenhouse gases are a pollutant.

Really? Thanks for the heads up.

EPA officials told the Times that before last week’s release of the agency’s watered-down opinion, the White House had pressured the EPA to delete large portions of research and analysis that pointed toward the need for regulatory action, including data that said imposing strict controls on motor vehicle emissions could create $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years.

It is not news that President Bush would pull such a stunt. His climate change policies have mostly consisted of denials and refusals to regulate any of the human activities linked to increasing global temperatures. Only recently did the White House accept the notion that the climate is, indeed, warming at an increasing rate and that this trend has contributed to increasing severity of storms that have had disastrous effects.

Nevertheless, it is shocking that the Bush administration would refuse to officially recognize a document ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States. After eight years, Bush still doesn’t get that he alone does not make the rules.