Over the next few days, the Obama administration will decide whether to address a major public health challenge facing the country: the large amount of mercury that continually pours out of coal-fired power plants, contaminating our air and drinking water.
Every year, mercury from coal-fired power plants is responsible for thousands of premature deaths, heart attacks, and serious respiratory illnesses. In addition, mercury is one of the leading causes of preventable birth defects.
Today, because of mercury, a baby may be born with brain damage or cerebral palsy. An infant may begin developing asthma, which will mean missed school days, visits to the hospital, less physical exercise, and potentially a greater risk of diabetes. And a parent or grandparent may go to the hospital with a heart attack or severe bronchitis.
We can stop this. We can spare children this tragic injustice and the pain it brings their families. We can spare adults from losing years off their lives. And we can spare taxpayers the enormous health care costs that come with mercury-related-illnesses.
Coal-fired power plants are responsible for 70 percent of our nation's mercury emissions. After being released into the air we breathe, mercury -- a heavy metal -- also falls into our soil and water, where it can contaminate the food we eat, especially fish.
The EPA has proposed rules that would reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by 90%, preventing 12,200 emergency room visits and saving $80 billion a year in health care costs. The rules -- now sitting on the president's desk -- are two decades overdue.
In 1990, when the Clean Air Act was last revised, Congress directed the EPA to establish limits on mercury and other emissions of coal-fired power plants. In March, after 20 years of delay, the EPA has finally issued a set of draft rules. By Monday, the president will decide whether to adopt the draft rules, weaken them, or withdraw them entirely. It will be one of the defining tests of the administration's commitment to public health and environmental protection.
The big power companies have had years to improve mercury emissions controls, and a majority of coal-fired plants (54%) have already done so. The remaining coal-fired plants are generally old and inefficient, and should have been retired years ago. The owners of these plants have been promoting the idea that the EPA's rules will destroy the American economy and cause rolling blackouts. They won't. It's just a scare tactic. In fact, some of the leading voices in our nation's utility industry -- the businesses that run our power lines -- do not object to the EPA's proposed rules.
The utility industry knows that if plant owners decide it is not cost-effective to adopt mercury emission controls, those plants can be converted to cleaner-burning natural gas. That would create even more jobs and reduce costs for consumers, because natural gas plants are more efficient than coal plants. Many old plants have already undergone this transformation, and the American economy -- not to mention our public health -- is stronger for it.
Owners of mercury-emitting coal-fired plants also argue they need more time, as well as long-term exemptions for some plants. There will always be excuses for delay. But two decades is long enough for the American people to wait for mercury to be removed from the air we breathe.
Coal-fired power plants and the pollution they produce -- including mercury -- are the number one threat to our public health and the environment. That is why my foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, recently provided a $50 million grant to the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, with the goal of retiring one-third of the nation's coal fleet by 2020. But the federal government must not wait another decade -- or another week -- to begin phasing out a pollutant that has harmed so many people's health.
This is not an issue of jobs versus the environment. It's an issue of the American people's public health versus a narrow special interest. And it is now up to the President to declare the winner.
Follow Michael R. Bloomberg on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NYCMayorsOffice
Only the best imported Chinese mercury for the U.S.A.
R/ PRONESE
If you don't want the coal, approve the nuclear. Sorry, but wind and solar simply aren't ready (or they are inappropriate for all locations).
I was once a fan of you, Mr Mayor, but you need to go.
We don't want any more of your lectures or progressive talking points. YOU FAILED TO DO YOUR MOST IMPORTANT JOB, which is to PROTECT citizens. And to allow cops to go unpunished... and then to make the insensitive comments you made...
Shame on you.
Furthermore, Bloomberg, you fully well know that is deceitful political bollocks.
What needs to happen is that the US engage in a national dialogue, with scientific studies to support the dialogue, of the differents risks, pros, cons and total costs to society of the different energy sources.
What needs to happen is a national energy plan. One that is not just sponsored by special interests like the Kochs and put forward by their venal, corrupt facilitators - Boehner and McConnell.
That would require a set of national, or even state-level, committees to study the total costs of the various energy sources. Like, with oil, just how much do we spend in military spending, and lives and limbs, to ensure supply? With coal, just how much air, water and soil pollution is created? And, what is the cost of the health effects that are put upon the population? Etc.
Currently, governments at all levels have implemented tax policies that obscure the real costs - by hiding them in tax policy. Those tax policies then discourage rational behavioral change and investment because that behavior is based upon special interest lies. The result is monster trucks for recreational use based upon fuel that is artificially low priced, or lack of investment in insulation because of costs paid in other ways. Time to start charging for the full costs - and letting people make rational decisions.
While the president decides the winner we are seeing those lost in their own minds coming back no matter how the mercury "infected" us, no matter the age. Autism and Alzheimer's are the same result of the mercury which invades our biology from burning coal or allowing the vaccinators to stab our children with mercury, aluminum, or lead. Heavy metals clog up the blood brain barrier of your constituents on your watch Governor. Coal and nukes are killing your constituents on your watch Governor Bloomberg.
Organic sulfur a crystal food can "cure" you form being lost in your own mind, give it a go before you vote and those elected officials won't be friends of ConEd, GE or any corporation which values profits over human life. 2012 the year we put an end to corporations and those slimy stockholders.
The Agents of the Crystalline Matrix
The same can be said for the Keystone XL Pipeline as currently proposed. I'm for progress, etc., but public safety should trump corporate profits everytime.
The problem with Bloomberg and most other politicians from New York and the Northeast is they want us to use gas but they don't want us to produce gas. There are enormous environmental benefits to consuming gas (we should switch out old coal industrial boilers for highly efficient gas boilers as well) and for the entire northeast, gas piped from the Marcellus compared to gas imports from the Middle East or gas piped from the US Gulf Coast region, would be much lower cost for the region's consumers. There are major benefits to gas but we keep talking about fracking for shale gas causing earthquakes, imploding the earth, reviving dormant volcanoes and other such nonsense. Figure out how to manage the environmental impacts from gas production, develop and enforce sensible regulation (please no regulations to prevent volcanic activity), then get the environmental and consumer benefits of gas. Get smart, not stupid.
I did not say all issues associated with gas production are nonsense, I said that volcanoes, the imploding earth and major earthquakes are nonsense. And I grew up with gas production, I understand the issues so don't act like you are the only community or set of communities that have ever had to deal with energy production. The environmental issues associated with shale production are certainly real and they are challenging but they are also manageable, much more so than climate change where natural gas has enormous benefits compared to coal (please don't come back to me with the bad work from Cornell suggesting gas is worse than coal, even the author is backing away). We also need gas to firm intermittent renewables. And there are enormous health and environmental issues associated with coal production, much more serious than gas, starting with the amount of water consumed, even for shale gas.
I repeat -- we need smart and appropriate regulation which means we should address real issues, not volcanoes.