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Karen Telleen-Lawton: The Murky Air Act and Gutting the EPA
Long, long ago — back in the 1970s — Santa Barbara’s oil spill and Rachel Carson’s seminal book Silent Spring inspired legislation including the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (CAA, 1972), and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency. These moves signaled not a failure of the free-market system but a realization that industry needed to begin facing the external as well as the internal costs of their processes.
Corporate interests and their political arms have been toiling ever since to shed those responsibilities. In the latest attempt, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski led a Senate debate June 10 on a measure designed to strip the EPA of its authority to regulate carbon pollution and hold manufacturers accountable. Coming in the midst of the most catastrophic environmental disaster in U.S. history, it was an incredible move. David Yarnold, president of the Environmental Defense Action Fund, said, “You can’t make this stuff up.”
The EPA is as flawed as any large agency, public or private, attempting to solve intractable problems and please diverse constituencies. But its accomplishments are pretty convincing.
In “The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1970 to 1990” (1997), the EPA found that the economic value of clean air programs was 42 times greater than the total costs of air pollution control during the 20-year period. Accounting for effects on industrial production, investment, productivity, consumption, employment and economic growth, the EPA estimated total benefits of $22.2 trillion against total costs of $523 billion — a net benefit of about $21.7 trillion.
A second mandated review completed in 1999 showed that by 2010, the Clean Air Act will have prevented 23,000 premature American deaths related to asthma and prevented 67,000 hospitalizations related to acute bronchitis, among other illnesses. The economy was saved 4.1 million lost work days.
The Clean Water Act has many successes as well, though its effect has been hampered by new chemicals, old infrastructure and limited tools against nonpoint pollution. According to a 2009 conference report by The Johnson Foundation, “increasing stresses from unregulated development, population growth and climate change” further hamper gains of earlier decades.
Fortunately for the health of supporters and detractors alike, the Senate rejected the bill on a 53-47 vote. Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, announced in a discussion leading up to the vote, “We’ve got to stop this attack on science and health.”
Steve Cochran of the Environmental Defense Fund weighed in afterward: “This shows that the majority of the Senate understands the need to act to address America’s global warming pollution.”
Long ago, we were willing, with perhaps some short-term justification, to sacrifice long-term environmental and economic health. But for all the murky waters, the BP blowout has clarified one thing: The short and long terms have converged.
Without a healthy environment, there can be no healthy economy. The EPA is our vehicle, as citizens, to see that the environment passes to our descendants in at least as good health as when we inherited it. We have failed miserably in the past century, but we can improve much faster if activists for a healthy economy will take their rightful place alongside activists for a healthy environment.
— Karen Telleen-Lawton’s column is a mélange of observations supporting sustainability. Graze her writing and excerpts from Canyon Voices: The Nature of Rattlesnake Canyon at www.CanyonVoices.com.
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» on 06.15.10 @ 06:55 AM
Though I have no doubt that focusing on environmental considerations has had a positive impact, continuing to rely on a governmental agency prone to abuses is foolhardy. Education is the best solution to most of what ails us, not big brother with a bazooka. I wonder if KTL has ever wondered why the EPA is being allowed to take a substantial power grab from congress by monitoring and controlling something that can’t be controlled. Greenhouse gases for the most part are naturally generated by every living thing on the planet. The only way to truly control them is by eradication and genocide. Is that what we have in store for us? That’s assuming of course that there is really a need to take the steps being proposed by those who are supposed to be watching out for us. And let’s not mention the 10 trillion dollar business attached to carbon and the Chicago Climate Exchange from which a good number of “green” warriors look to make a mint on the backs of hard-working Americans. So having the likes of EDF and EDAF, not to mention Al Gore, watching over the EPA is like the fox guarding the hen house. But go right ahead and continue to tout big government control. You may just find that there are crooks everywhere, including in the EPA.
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» on 06.15.10 @ 12:45 PM
The government should learn a distinction between punishing regulation and oversight. Since being government employees, they don’t have the mental capacity to have strict oversight so they try the punishing regulations. The porn channel is all they seem to be interested in.
Why don’t they consider giving tax breaks to all manufacturers and business that create or use new inventions and technologies to clean up their workplaces and businesses. This would benefit new businesses, entrepeners and existing businesses. Instead, they prefer to punish them with a cap and trade (tax) policy instead. Another government scheme to destroy the wealth and capitalistic system we have had for so many years. The idealogical agenda is basically good, it’s just the tactics used to change. We all need to work together, but not destroy our country in the process!
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