What Comes After Cubed? For a green, you're sounding a little purple about this. Okay, I too am opposed to billowing fumes of untreated coal fumes, but that's not what's at stake here. I quote from the editorial you linked (here, by the way):

One of its main targets was a rule requiring operators of older, coal-fired plants to install the most up-to-date pollution-control equipment whenever they upgraded their facilities in a way that increased airborne emissions. During the late 1990s dozens of companies, including Southern, were slapped with stiff fines and sued for violating that rule.

Last month, the EPA essentially wrote the rule out of existence and will now allow polluters to increase emissions without having to install new control equipment. EPA officials insist that lawsuits filed under the previous rule will still be pursued, but that assurance is worthless. Certainly, utility executives don't seem too worried by the prospect.

The claim that we're rolling back environmental protection, as that author firmly believes, is at best an extremely one-sided reading of the rule changes, as even the nature-boy, anti-SUV Easterbrook has admitted:

Congress has not altered environmental law under Bush 43, and administration decisions in matters such as the "new source review" issue [i.e., the policy under which the polluters had been pursued] on power plants will, in the worst case, simply slow the rate at which pollution declines.

I agree with you that efficiency is a matter of some perspective. I'm talking about principles. Bush waived those coal-emissions regulations because companies were using the restrictions as a reason not to upgrade. Plus, some of the upgrades that tripped the requirement for updated pollution control were questionable. It was, in short, onerous policy. So is the principle cleaner air or having "tough" policies? Under the Bush rules, the plants can upgrade facilities (thus reducing some pollutants -- a good thing, after all) without having to comply with the heavy, stack-scrubber pollution-control updates that would blow the capital improvements budget -- the requirement of which would lead to the unintended outcome of the Clinton-era EPA rules: no upgrades at all, increased pollution as plants age, and a strained business-regulatory relationship. Thus was Clinton able to claim he had tough EPA rules on the books, even though those rules increased pollution by discouraging upgrades.

In other words, the Bush compromise reduces pollution less than total implementation of the Clinton-era rules. But those rules provided a perverse incentive for coal burners to run decrepit plants on outdated technology for as long as they possibly could. Bush has in effect handed the environment half a loaf, instead of none; and the environmentalists have collectively shit in his hand for it.

More: This is all slightly reminiscent of the idea that Bush "wants more arsenic in your water." Clinton, on his way out the door, had dropped arsenic tolerance to nearly unmeetable levels (unmeetable, at least, without huge increases in local spending -- another unfunded mandate). In addition, a lot of the morbidity and mortality information showed that the reduction would have a negligible effect on public health. In other words, Clinton made a huge, expensive, and poorly understood environmental gesture (but not, by the way, until he was grabbing his hat on the way out); Bush put things back to where they had been for 99.999% of Clinton's 8 years, and the greens roasted him for it. That's why we need efficiency in environmental policy. Not everything that is arguably good for the environment is worth the cost, either factored or unintended. I agree that efficiency has an unfriendly face, since it effectively puts a price on everything -- even endangered Warblers. But everything does have a price, even if we don't admit it.