Key excerpts from Environmental Protection Agency, White House and other government documents on the Bush administration’s decision rejecting regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act:

“I believe this Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking demonstrates the Clean Air Act ... is ill-suited for the task of regulating global greenhouse gases. Based on the analysis to date, pursuing this course of action would inevitably result in a very complicated, time-consuming and likely, convoluted set of regulations,” EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson in preface to regulatory notice issued Friday.

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“The implications of a decision to regulate (greenhouse gases) under the act are so far-reaching that a number of other federal agencies have offered critical comments and raised serious questions,” Johnson in preface to notice.

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“There is strong disagreement with many of the legal, analytical, economic, science and policy interpretations in the draft; however, these letters do reflect agreement with you that the Clean Air Act is a deeply flawed and unsuitable vehicle for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Susan E. Dudley, administrator for regulatory affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, in a letter Thursday to Johnson.

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“The issues raised in interagency review are so significant that we have been unable to reach interagency consensus in a timely way, and as a result, this staff draft cannot be considered administration policy or representative of the views of the administration,” Dudley, in the letter Thursday to Johnson.

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“The EPA staff now has prepared a draft suggesting that the Clean Air Act can be both workable and effective for addressing global climate change by regulating greenhouse gas emissions from stationary and mobile sources of virtually every kind.

“Our agencies have serious concerns with this suggestion because it does not fairly recognize the enormous _ and we believe, insurmountable _ burdens, difficulties and costs, and likely limited benefits, of using the Clean Air Act to regulate (greenhouse gas) emissions,” the secretaries of the Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation and Energy departments in a letter Wednesday to EPA Administrator Johnson.