The buck apparently doesn't stop with Stephen Johnson, the titular Administrator of the EPA, who apparently can't say just when he'll direct the agency he leads to begin complying with the Supreme Court's April 2007 ruling that CO2 must be regulated as an atmospheric pollutant.

In addition to his uncertainty on that particular point, he also doesn't have the faintest clue, apparently, how many people in the agency -- if any -- are working on the issue, and was unable to even give Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) an estimate beyond, "I know we have staff working on a myriad of issues." He declined to speculate about when the EPA might start complying with its court-directed duties, but helpfully informed Feinstein that the agency has "a lot of activities, important activities that we're working on as well."

He was, however, perfectly certain about one thing: "Madam Chairman, I am not stonewalling."

Oh, OK then.

The Supreme Court has ordered the EPA to determine what hazard to public health and the human environment CO2 and other greenhouse gases cause, and how those gases should be regulated to fight global warming, in a ruling that came down a little under a year ago.

Johnson promised to account for how his agency was meeting that edict by last fall. And we know for a fact that there are EPA staffers throughout the organization who are chomping at the bit to begin working on this issue, no matter what myriad of other issues Johnson says they're working on. And we know that, after the IPCC report and the Bali declaration, there's really no reason for policymakers to hem and haw about regulating CO2.

Sen. Feinstein summed it up better than we could, so she gets the last word:

"The only conclusion I can reach is you are under pressure not to do anything. This is the Environmental Protection Agency -- not the administration protection agency."