fisher, in all due fairness to the EPA, they are a government agency, which means they are answerable to Congress. Congress is answerable to Lobbyists and Corporations, therefore, the EPA is indirectly answerable to the companies that they might try and regulate, so it's no wonder that stupid decisions are made (like pushing hybrids) I personally have no problem with nuclear powerplants, but expect the regulations for running those plants to be as stringent as what we dealt with when I was involved with them in the Navy (which has the best safety record for reactors in the world, even given the much more rigorous environement that naval powerplants operate under). But, thanks to companies trying to cut too many corners and causing issues like 3 Mile Island, or sloppy engineering like happened in Chernobyl, people are skittish as hell about them. And frankly with good reason. I think nuclear power is one of the answers to the future, BUT, an accident at a nuclear plant is WAY more serious than even the worst accident at any conventional powerplant. If a conventional plant goes up, the worst case is fire/explosion and possibly localized contamination due to chemicals. A nuke plant goes up, and we've already seen the results in Chernobyl, where an area of several hundred (or thousand) square miles was made unihabitable by something as simple as a steam cloud being released, not to mention the people killed or forever poisoned by cancer, lukemia, etc...
Until the EPA is able to operate independently and not be answerable to big companies for making unpopular decisions (like trying to raise fuel economy standards) they will continue to be ineffective. Do they make mistakes, yes, but who doesn't? But as others here have said, pollution today is much better than the lowpoint of the 60's and early 70's, and that wasn't because companies decided to be nice guys and clean up there act. Cleaning up a chemical waste dump does nothing to help a companies bottom line, and costs money, but they did it because they were forced to.
