When it comes to public safeguards, industry never wants to talk about keeping people healthy and protecting the environment; they’d much rather have a conversation about how safeguards will cut into their profits — the costs in the cost-benefit equation. Even on matters where Congress, by statute, has made the discussion of regulatory costs legally irrelevant or a matter of only secondary importance, you can rest assured that industry will still be there talking exclusively about costs. That is largely what is at issue in Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, which is being argued today before the U.S. Supreme Court—another attempt by polluting industries to inject discussions of costs where they don’t belong.
But, for the EPA’s rule to limit mercury and other toxic pollutants from fossil-fueled power plants, the subject of the case, perhaps the most critical issue is the regulatory benefits at stake, and how the fulfillment of those benefits has been on a circuitous journey that is now extending into its 25th year. You read that right. It has been a quarter of a century since Congress first directed the EPA to issue this rule. That’s when it passed the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. As explained in a 2009 CPR white paper, the rule should have been completed by no later than 2000. This ongoing delay has come at a huge price for the public health. With every year that this rule has not been in effect, as many as 94,000 babies have been born in the United States with elevated blood mercury levels—levels high enough to leave them with irreversible brain damage—and as many as 231 children have suffered significant enough impairment of brain function to result in permanent mental retardation.
The fossil fuel industry no doubt wants to distract the public from contemplating the harmful health effects of its polluting activities; hence, it is trying to steer the conversation to regulatory costs in today’s case. (The fact that these regulatory cost estimates are systematically overstated only provides them with further impetus on this score.) It might be a useful PR move from their perspective, but it is not a legal requirement under the relevant provision of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Let’s hope the Supreme Court will recognize this difference and reject industry’s abhorrent attempt to further delay this already long overdue safeguard for protecting our children’s health.
Showing 2,829 results
James Goodwin | March 25, 2015
When it comes to public safeguards, industry never wants to talk about keeping people healthy and protecting the environment; they’d much rather have a conversation about how safeguards will cut into their profits — the costs in the cost-benefit equation. Even on matters where Congress, by statute, has made the discussion of regulatory costs legally […]
James Goodwin | March 25, 2015
In the run-up to this morning’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule to limit hazardous air pollutants from fossil-fueled power plants—and indeed throughout the oral arguments themselves—opponents repeatedly pointed out that the benefits of the rule in reducing mercury pollution were “only” between $4 million and $6 million. Putting […]
Erin Kesler | March 24, 2015
In the United States, a handful of large corporations including Perdue and Tyson direct and oversee nearly every step in the poultry production process, essentially serving as overlords to the tens of thousands of small farmers with whom they contract to raise their chickens for slaughter. While deriving the lion’s share of the profit, these […]
Erin Kesler | March 23, 2015
Last Friday marked the 10 year anniversary of the BP Texas City Refinery explosion that killed 15 people and injured 170 others. In an opinion piece for the Houston Chronicle, CPR President Rena Steinzor describes the systemic failures which led to the explosion and the regulatory gaps that remain. She calls for criminal investigations, “everytime refinery operations kill, maim, or threaten […]
Matt Shudtz | March 20, 2015
Last week, workers’ advocates at the Southern Poverty Law Center and Nebraska Appleseed got the official word that OSHA will not develop new regulations to protect the men and women who do the dirty work of turning clucking chickens into boneless cutlets. It’s an industry where vulnerable workers—mostly women, immigrants, and folks geographically isolated from […]
Erin Kesler | March 18, 2015
Today, CPR Senior Policy Analyst James Goodwin will testify as an expert witness on the regulatory process for a House Committee on Small Business Hearing, “Tangled in Red Tape: New Challenges for Small Manufacturers.” Goodwin’s testimony highlights the economic as well as public health and safety benefits of regulations in relation to small businesses. He notes: […]
Matt Shudtz | March 16, 2015
What’s old is new again. This week, competing bills to reform the 40-year old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) hit the Senate—one from Senators Vitter and Udall, the other from Senators Boxer and Markey. Both the environmental community and the chemical industry agree that TSCA is broken and must be fixed. This is a law that’s so poorly […]
Celeste Monforton | March 9, 2015
This blog is cross-posted from the Pump Handle. It’s a rare thing on Capitol Hill when a member of the Administration is on the hot seat from both sides of the aisle. But that’s what happened on Tuesday when President Obama’s regulatory czar, Howard Shelanski, JD, PhD, testified at a joint hearing of two subcommittees of the House […]
Daniel Farber | March 9, 2015
There are troubling indications that Keith Hall lets ideology blind him to basic economics. Last week, in a post about the employment effect of regulations, I mentioned briefly that the new Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Keith Hall, had endorsed some questionable views on the subject. A reader pointed me toward an additional writing […]