The Clean Air Act turns 40 this month. But if dirty energy proponents and climate-change deniers have their way, it won't survive intact for another 40 weeks.
Ever since the US Supreme Court agreed that the EPA has the right to regulate greenhouse gasses under the act, lobbyists for dirty energy have been trying to gut the law.
Americans can't let that happen. Promoters of dirty air have been vilifying this law since it was just a notion in a congressional subcommittee, four decades ago. They carry on with the exact same fear-mongering today. They keep peddling the same old falsehoods: enforcing the Clean Air Act is a job killer, bad for industry, certain to ruin the economy, etc.
In 1970 they said it would "cause entire industries to collapse," and in 1980 they said it would cause "a quiet death for business across the country."
It is really kind of sad. You would think that -- after four decades -- they could come up with some new talking points. But no: It is always the same stuff.
Unfortunately for them, we now have the benefit of 40 years of hindsight. And even the most casual review of the facts shows how demonstrably wrong the defenders of dirty air and dirty energy have been -- time and time, again.
They are dead wrong, and the facts speak for themselves.
Economic Benefits
Clean-air regulation in this country has created trillions of dollars in economic value. This year alone, the benefits of clean-air programs are projected to total $110 billion. In a bipartisan gathering last week, EPA director Lisa Jackson said that the "total benefits of the Clean Air Act amount to 40 times the cost of regulation." Put another way, for every $1 they spend on regulation, this country gets back $40 in economic benefit.
Clean-air regulation has also dramatically increased worker productivity, preventing 4,100,000 lost work days since 1970, and 31,000,000 days in which Americans would have had to restrict activity due to air-pollution-related illness. (Now that's good for business).
It has also created entire new markets for automobiles and cleaner vehicles. Today's new cars, light trucks, and heavy-duty diesel engines are up to 95 percent cleaner than past models thanks to technology such as the catalytic converter. New non-road engines used in construction and agriculture have 90 percent less particle pollution and nitrogen oxide emissions than previous models. Finally, vehicle and fuel programs from clean-air regulations will produce $186 billion in air quality and health benefits by 2030 -- all this with only $11 billion in costs, a nearly 16-to-1 benefit/cost ratio.
Health Benefits
Clean air is essential for our health and safety; it is unconscionable to allow bottom-line profits to come before human life.
Clean air regulation has produced dramatic health benefits for the nation. According to an EPA analysis, the first 20 years of Clean Air Act programs, from 1970 to 1990, prevented:
• 205,000 premature deaths
• 672,000 cases of chronic bronchitis
• 21,000 cases of heart disease
• 843,000 asthma attacks
• 10.4 million lost I.Q. points in children -- mostly from reducing lead in gasoline
• 18 million child respiratory illnesses
The health benefits have been most dramatic for our children. By 1995, the percentage of U.S. children with elevated blood-lead levels had dropped from 88.2% in the 1970s to 4.4%, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Likewise, ear infections, which have cost parents 3-5 billion dollars per year, have decreased as air quality has increased, according to the Surgeon General.
In total, the health benefits of the first 20 years of clean air regulation amount to $22.2 trillion, and the total compliance costs over the same years cost $0.5 trillion. That's a savings of $21.7 billion dollars over the first 20 years of the act's existence.
This includes a projected prevention of 1,700,000 asthma attacks, 22,000 respiratory-related hospital admission, 42,000 prevented cardiovascular hospital visits, and 295 million incidents of skin cancer.
Here's to the Next 40 Years!
This is a fight from which we cannot stand down. Clean air and water is literally a matter of life and death. Some communities -- particularly communities of color -- don't have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.
Our clean-air regulations, and the Environmental Protection Agency, need to be strengthened and protected from attacks by special interests, who continually try to put the power of America's regulatory power on the chopping block. We have a long way to go before we breathe a sigh of relief, and a long fight to protect ourselves from the promoters of dirty air.
But let us remember this: Every time the American people have insisted upon higher environmental performance from our industries, American business has risen to the occasion. Over and over, entrepreneurs have shown that they can find ways to build private wealth -- without unduly harming public health. That will happen, too, when the EPA begins regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.
To pretend otherwise is to deliberately ignore our nation's proud history of continually improving our environmental performance. Perhaps worse, it is to confess an appalling lack of confidence in the creative power of American ingenuity.
Special interest lobbyists have been hitting the panic button about clean air regulations for (at least) 40 years. For decades, paid lobbyists have tried to dupe the public (and numerous politicians) that spewing poison into the air and water for free was good for business -- and that clean air and good health should be an afterthought. They are wrong. And the champions of clean air are right -- still.
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I will never forget. In the late 80's and early 90's the air was still dirty enough that I would sneeze and my sinuses completely clogged every time I got on the freeway. The air frequently had an orange tint and always appeared hazy unless it had rained recently.
I'm not sure when it changed, but logic (mine) leads me to believe that the change was gradual and therefore the clean air we now have quietly appeared. I think people are not recognizing the importance of this issue because it was such a gradual transition the filthy air was forgotten as gradually as it disappeared.
Any time one of the deniers tries to say that the clean air act is just a scam, you would find my response him (usually a him) both informative and entertaining. No way will I stand by and allow our history to be rewritten by these ignorant and selfish people.
Recently, with the terrible toll the recession has taken, the air has in my opinion become even cleaner. There is no denying that there is less personal driving and I am fairly certain that it is measurable and measured by government agencies.
Resign the petition!
Here are excerpts from various Van Jones biographers:
Van Jones founded Green for All, a national organization that promises environmentally-friendly jobs. He wrote the 2008 New York Times bestseller "The Green Collar Economy" that is endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle and Al Gore. Jones’ Green for All group partners with Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection in proliferating global warming propaganda
Jones is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (George Soros’ massive partisan think tank), the architects and advocates of most of Obama’s policies. Jones was a founder and leader of Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement. The group, now disbanded, had Marxist, Leninist and Maoist influences. Jones admitted that he became a communist and radical after the officers accused of using excessive force on Rodney King were acquitted.
Jones was named TIME Magazine's 2008 Environmental Hero , and Jones has had progressive environmental writings published in numerous magazines and academic journals.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Van Jones co-authored Color of Change. Boasting 450,000 members, Color of Change has become the nation's largest online African-American advocacy group.
Jones is a founding board member of the National Apollo Alliance and 1 Sky, two national organizations promoting clean energy and climate solutions.
As for nuclear, it requires massive government subsidies to be viable, on the tune of 13 B per plant.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1812540,00.html
Even if you're a denier of GLOBAL WARMING - you can agree that less emissions is good. Electric cars, ipods, cell phones, computers, 50% powered by coal. I'm personally not ready to pay more for electricity to satisfy a "political movement."
http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2008/08/ah_carbon_capture_we_hardly_kn.php
http://www.johannhari.com/2007/09/02/gordon-brown-s-looming-decision-about-ol-king-cole
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/12/lets_talk_about_clean_coal.php
one would think that for a guy who is such a stickler for stats and science, would have checked his math. And where's the 21.7 b(tr)illion, anyway?
the whole section called "health benefits", sounds great, and neophytes will lap it up. The only problem is there is no way, AT ALL, to establish causality, and I for one am tired of government agencies using their own "research" to try to justify their existance and promote agenda. unfortunately the most dangerous pollution I see here is the one that makes un-provable assertions based on questionable "statistics".
And,
there is no man-made global warming, anymore, its glodal climate disruption, and its not a matter of our existance, its a matter of helping third-world countries attain some form of equality with the rich colonialists. Come clean, admit it, and stop with the end-of-the-world nonsense.
Regardless, we have the ability, indeed the human imperative, to improve our situation. If we cease to pursue improvement, we're no better than animals living in our own waste. It only makes sense to do so.
Its sophistry to claim that questioning the theory that fossil fuels cause climate change equates to not believing that "science is a valid method of study", or makes me a "denier" as the article states. Marginalizing opposition as kooks is an easy out but it does nothing to validate your position. It only serves to make you the one who is stubborn and refusing to listen, an accusation hurled against most "deniers".
I agree that the world would be a different place if we all had to take care of our own trash and I'm for clean energy. I just don't think that a government greatly influenced by political pressures should be in a position to develop policies to influence or determine what is or isn't scientific fact. And we certainly should not create an entire "green economy" that would be subject to political ideology.
I maintain that the unstated goal of the Green Movement and Obama's EPA is more about environmental justice than environmental protection.
http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/ - or maybe not an unstated goal after all.