Today the Obama administration made a decision that will endanger the health of tens of thousands of Americans. Its choice to delay stronger standards for smog lets polluters off the hook and leaves Americans with sicker family members and higher medical costs.
Smog standards exist because smog is dangerous to human health. It causes respiratory illness, cardiac disease, and premature death. Though we have made progress in reducing this harmful pollution in American skies, we haven't licked the problem yet.
The stronger smog standards would have saved up to 4,300 lives and avoid as many as 2,200 heart attacks every year. They would have made breathing easier for the 24 million Americans living with asthma. And they also would have created up to $37 billion in health benefits annually.
By failing to deliver these health and economic benefits to the American people, President Obama has come down on the side of polluters and those extreme forces who deny the value of government safeguards.
In his statement today, President Obama referred to a need to reduce "regulatory burdens." But having cleaner air to breathe is not a burden for the American people.
Nor is complying with safeguards an undue burden for business. Businesses would have incurred costs to reduce their smog pollution, just as they have to pay to haul away garbage, make sure transit fleets don't endanger drivers, and make sure their food products don't sicken people. These are some of the costs of doing business.
In the case of ozone standards, the costs wouldn't have kicked in for several years, long after the current economic downturn. And keep in mind that in 2010, the top 10 utilities had a combined $28.4 billion in profits and $7.5 billion in cash balances. They can afford to embrace innovative pollution controls and protect their customers' health.
Meanwhile clean air investments yield enormous returns. The smog standards would generate $37 billion in value for a cost of about $20 billion by 2020. Take together, Clean Air Act standards generated approximately $1.3 trillion in public health and environmental benefits in 2010 alone for a cost of $50 billion. That's a value worth more than 9 percent of GDP for a cost of only .4 percent of GDP. The ratio of benefits to costs is more than 26 to 1.
Americans know it's cheaper to stay healthy than it is to pay for asthma attacks, missed work days, emergency room visits, and hospital stays. That's why a June poll for the American Lung Association of likely 2012 voters from all parties found that 75 percent support the EPA's effort to set stronger smog standards and 66 percent believe that EPA scientists -- not Congress -- should establish clean air standards.
Strengthening the standards for smog isn't just popular. It's required by law.
In 2008, the Bush EPA adopted ozone standards outside the range unanimously recommended by the EPA's science advisors. As a result, those standards were challenged by more than a dozen states, the American Lung Association, NRDC, and others for being unlawfully harmful to public health.
When the Bush EPA ignored its own science advisors on another air quality standard, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned those standards. Lisa Jackson, the current EPA administrator, wanted to avoid a similar legal fate on ozone. She concluded that the Bush-era ozone rules are "not defensible" under the Clean Air Act, and she committed to creating a legal standard that protects Americans' health.
Today's decision means the Obama administration now accepts the Bush-era standard. It also means NRDC will resume our lawsuit challenging it.
The Obama administration has been on the right side of the law and the science on other strong clean air protection -- including the one limiting mercury pollution -- which are now under attack in Congress. The president needs now to mount a forceful defense of those standards so we don't endanger Americans further.
This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.
Frances Beinecke: GOP Repackages Old Attacks on Environmental Safeguards and Calls It a Jobs Plan
Jeff Biggers: Breaking: New Study Links Mountaintop Removal to 60,000 Additional Cancer Cases
Matt Wasson: Round One of the EPA "Coal Ash Bowl" Goes to Big Coal
Joseph Romm: NASA's James Hansen Recycles Myths in His Pointless Attack on U.S. Climate Action
Obama's EPA Regulations Will Cost Coal Industry $180 Billion ...
1. Enthusiasm
2. Uncertainty
3. Irritation
4. Anger
5. Contempt
I keep asking myself, "What is wrong with this guy?" All he seems to be doing is splitting the difference on every issue, and he keeps splitting it in favor of right wing corporate interests. He won't fight for anything, not the environment, not jobs, not the infrastructure, not anything that matters to the people who voted for him. Maybe he's looking at the Republican candidates and thinks he'll get by as the lesser of two evils. And maybe that's true. But I feel myself getting weaker and weaker. Pretty soon I won't have the strength to pull the lever for anybody. That's what he has to worry about. Because the Sixth Stage of Political Grief is Indifference, when the voter decides the game isn't worth the candle, the rules are stacked against him, and he might as well stay home.
firstly, watch some one who is having a severe asthma attack. It is hard to watch even when it is yourself that you are watching. Failing that just have some muscular person either gut punch you every one or two seconds to mimic the effect of an asthmatic compulsive cough or just have them sit on the lower part of your rib cage and the upper abdomen for a couple days or weeks.
secondly get some facts and figures about how much asthma costs Americans and the US.
Thirdly it's not just asthma it is any and all respiratory and circulatory illnesses that will be worsened by increasing erosion of air quality
Obama has pulled a no brainer, as in, he hasn't made any effort to see that this issue is much more complicated than he thinks. It is not just a jobs issue unless the jobs he wants to increase are medical or the undertaker.
Personally I think Obama has bought into Bush's secret means of solving the SS and Medicare/aide issue. Kill people off before they get a chance to receive full average benefits.
And making sure health care is not adequately accessible and toxins are ubiquitous and concentrated is a sure bet to reach that goal..
They just have to find enough loyal buyers hoping that the next term will be the "Mac." You see a con only works if the con gets what he or she wants. If I'm looking at a second term, I promised you hope and progress for the 1st term, I didn't promise you when and how. Now, the 2nd term, is the season for such promises. They have to either tell us now, when and how, or the con won't work.
We are still waiting for you to provide a citation to those studies claiming 4,300 lives saved, 2,200 fewer heart attacks. If you can not provide those credible studies, then we can only assume you are blowing smoke. This is my third request - yet you have provided nothing to support the claim benefits.
Your professional courtesy would be appreciated.
What more needs to be said?
Ya, right, what else are they going to say?
I'm totally in favor of more pollution and related illness?
If Americans really cared about the environment instead of their SUV's we'd know about it by now.
We have since been forced to hire consultant to keep up with this and the Government agencies see this as a good thing because we had to hire more people. This thinking actually had merits before unrestricted free trade because all our competitors were in the same boat so this was an added cost past on to the customers. However in an unrestricted free trade world my Asian competition does not have this added cost and are thus more competitive. We lose programs for a nickel an item the consultants cost were our nickel!!!!
That's the problem with comparing "apples" to "oranges".
If existing energy technologies had to pay for the full negative effects of their usage, their costs would probably be higher than "clean" energy technologies.
The old saying goes.............." you can pay me now, or pay me later."
In this case the "pay me later" is in medical bills, lost hours at work, suffering, and in many cases death.
If the TRUE costs of burning fossil fuels was passed on to the consumer, maybe things would be different...............................