Who's At Fault for Dirty Air?

First of all, we can pretty much put air pollution on the back burner, despite a big fundraising and lobbying effort by the greens. The air today in the US is cleaner than it has been in over a century and the laws that made it that way are still in place and are functioning just fine.

Still, greens are panicking that Bush's Clean Air Initiative will mess things up. It's hyperbole, of course; Bush just wants to slow the growth of environmental regulation after Clinton pushed regulation far beyond what Congress ever envisioned. The Left has it all wrong -- they actually think the air is in crisis and Social Security is just fine. Oops.

This got me thinking. Who is most responsible now for wantonly causing bad air in the US?

Not automakers. Their cars are cleaner than ever. Not steel makers or utilities. Their smokestacks are scrubbed. Not gas companies. Their refineries and fuels are cleaner than ever also. Nope. Here are the Smog and Soot All Stars:

• The Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity. Their lawsuits against logging and forest management stopped forest managemetn and led to massive wildlfires that filled the atmosphere with tons of hydrocarbons.
• The US Fish & Wildlife Service. After the tragic Southern California wildfires, the head of USFWS operations in Southern California admitted that his staff had stalled for years permits that would have led to forest thinning, so they're as guilty as the Uber-Greens.
• The Earth Liberation Front. The SUVs they set on fire in LA and the apartment complex they torched in San Diego probably filled the air with more smoke and haze than all the Hummers ever made.