I am not one who generally "bashes" Presidents, no matter who they are. So, I am not inclined to "bash" this President. But, he really disappointed me this past week. I am talking about President Bush's decision that he will not require our nation's energy plants to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from their dirty smoke stacks . They are not all dirty, but too many of them are dirty and the dirty one are making people ill.

To which, Senator Clinton was quick to comment: "CO2 today, and see you later tomorrow." The not overly clever response referred to the fact that the President had made CO2 reduction a campaign issue during the election. Now, he has changed his mind.

The President claims that we are in the midst of an energy emergency and that we should not make any additional demands on our energy producers, whether their emissions are dirty or not. I guess he figures they already have enough on their minds. Should we have a brownout today? Or perhaps a nice blackout will do. It's a financial argument really: energy is already costly, let's not increase the cost by making energy producers clean up their acts.

Ironically, just last week the United States Supreme Court ruled that the EPA cannot consider the cost of compliance in assessing air pollution penalties. A violator had claimed that compliance would cost so much money that it would be economically impractical. But, the Supreme Court ruled that cost of compliance has nothing to do with it. Dirty companies must clean up their acts.

That's what makes this even stranger. According to the Supreme Court, if the federal government wants to fine you for being an air polluter, you cannot claim in your defense that compliance is too expensive. But if you are the President and you want to let energy producers off the hook, you can apparently do so for exactly this same reason. It must be nice to be the President, or have a friend who is one!

What does all of this have to do with real estate? Little, unless you want to buy a home in an area that does not have smog. You see, carbon dioxide causes smog to develop. Some of our dirtiest businesses in this country are those that produce energy and emit smog producing CO2. In fact, many east coast states have asserted, even in court, that a lot of their dirty air actually originates from mid-western electric production facilities.

That's why this was such a delicious issue for the President when he was running for President. It apparently doesn't taste as good right now. Unfortunately, this significant reversal so early in the President's administration just fuels the stereotype that Republican Presidents care more about big business than they do about the environment. I think that this over-generalization is silly, and that you have to judge each President on his [or her??] own merit.

So, as to this particular President, the reversal does raise a serious question about his commitment to protecting our environment. Big business needs protection and there is nothing wrong about protecting these companies. But we need to be protected as well. We need to breathe cleaner air. We need to reduce the incidence of respiratory illness in this country. We need to lower the rate of childhood asthma.

In each of these regards, the C02 emission issue was a real important issue. Levels from these facilities are often too high, and they needed to come down. I hope that the state's pay attention to this issue. It looks like Washington isn't going to, at least any time soon.

The information provided in this column is written by Stuart Lieberman,a practicing environmental attorney, and is for general information purposes only. It is not legal advice and should not be used in place of legal advice.

Stuart Lieberman, Esq., and IRED.Com, Inc., will not accept any responsibilty for any reliance on the information in this column or any damages whatsoever resulting from reading this column.