Michael Fumento

Nine years ago I wrote in my book Polluted Science and in the Weekly Standard an article on new EPA air pollution standards that lawn mowers would one day fall victim to these onerous and unnecessary regulations. This was not really going out on a limb. In 1994, the Clinton EPA administrator Carol Browner had said that "small gasoline engines that Americans use in yard and garden work are a significant source of air pollution." But in sworn testimony to Congress in 1997, she told a different story. The standards are "not about outdoor barbecues and lawn mowers," she testified, smearing such assertions as "junk science" and "scare tactics." Said Browner: "They are fake. They are wrong. They are manipulative." Frank O'Donnell, then-executive director of the Clean Air Trust, called talk of regulating lawn mowers "crazed propaganda."

Now I write in the Weekly Standard that the EPA is indeed set to impose tough regulations on lawnmowers and the primary environmentalist supporting the agency is -- surprise! -- Frank O'Donnell. Read about how the EPA couldn't care less about science or smog, but only sees another opportunity to wrap its tentacles around something new.