Today’s decision of the Obama administration to withdraw new ozone rules is not only bad policy, it is also illegal. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to revisit its National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) every five years to ensure that they are adequate to protect the public health and safety. In 2006, the Bush Administration revisited the rules as required, but proposed a new standard of .75 P.P.M., which was far above the unanimous recommendations of the scientists who said somewhere between .60 and .70 P.P.M. was necessary to protect the public health. A lawsuit followed, and in response the Obama administration re-opened the rulemaking. This delayed a legal decision which most assuredly would have over-turned the 2008 final rules.
The Obama EPA proposed the more rigorous standards that could be supported by the science of 2006. In truth, new evidence suggests that the .60 to .70 limit itself may be too lenient, and that tens of thousands of people every year face premature deaths due to ozone.
Now, the Obama administration, noting that the standards will be revisited again in 2013, after the election, has withdrawn the rulemaking, in the name of regulatory relief.
By not following through with the new rules, the administration actually held back what surely would have been a successful lawsuit in 2008 (and one which will be re-instated). Moreover, the claim that Obama and the EPA are still protecting the public health is ludicrous. Real people will die from the failure to follow the law. Yes, there will be lawsuits and yes, eventually, the environmental groups will win because the law is clear, but in the meantime, many more people will have their health harmed and will die. Far from “regulatory relief,” if you can call killing people regulatory relief, the costs of these premature deaths far outweigh any direct costs to industry in order to comply with new rulemaking.
If the Obama administration or Members of Congress really want to impose higher costs on our economy in lower productivity to protect large corporations from lower costs to control dangerous pollution, if they are willing to make a policy decision to trade off lives of the young and vulnerable to enrich a smaller slice of the electorate (those who profit by not controlling their pollution), I suggest that they have an actual public policy debate about it in front of the American public. See who agrees that sacrificing health and lives of people who gain nothing from this pollution in order to lower costs for others is the American way.
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Victor Flatt | September 2, 2011
Today’s decision of the Obama administration to withdraw new ozone rules is not only bad policy, it is also illegal. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to revisit its National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) every five years to ensure that they are adequate to protect the public health and safety. In 2006, the Bush Administration […]
Daniel Farber | September 1, 2011
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. I should probably start by putting my cards on the table. I’m not really an advocate of cap and trade as compared with other forms of regulation. What I care about is getting effective carbon restrictions in place, whether they take the form of cap and trade, a carbon tax, industry-wide […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | August 31, 2011
House Republicans have promised this week that upon their return to Washington after the recess they will attempt to stop 10 important proposed regulations because they are “job-destroying.” Adhering to the belief that “if you say it often enough, people will believe its true,” the party continues to insist that regulations cost jobs. But, as I […]
Matt Shudtz | August 25, 2011
Shortly after my August 5th post criticizing their Data Quality Act complaint to EPA, the International Platinum Group Metals Association sent me a kindly-written response letter (Inside EPA recently reported on the letter). Accusing me of both missing the point of their complaint and brushing aside important scientific concerns to make a headline-grabbing call for “over-regulation,” […]
Rena Steinzor | August 23, 2011
The final agency regulatory “look-back” plans, released by the White House this morning, don’t appear to satisfy anyone. They fall far short of their obvious goal: to placate greedy and intemperate industry demands that major rules be cancelled. And they distress public interest advocates, who fear they will preoccupy agencies with make-work at the expense of crucial […]
Sidney A. Shapiro | August 22, 2011
The current anti-regulatory mantra of Republican legislators (e.g., Cantor, Boehner, Issa) and conservative think tanks (e.g., CEI and Heritage) is that regulation is a “job-killer.” And a top plank of Republicans’ job agenda when they return from the summer recess is to limit regulations. There is just one problem with this rhetoric. It is not backed up by […]
James Goodwin | August 16, 2011
What would you do if a report you funded was debunked by a scathing critique from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service? What if you found that the researchers you funded had based 70 percent of their analysis of the costs of regulation on a regression based on opinion polling data? What if the researchers who […]
Ben Somberg | August 12, 2011
Former Senator Blanche Lincoln, now heading the National Federation of Independent Business’s new anti-regulatory campaign, faced criticism in recent days for citing the debunked SBA study claiming regulations cost $1.75 trillion in a year. The NFIB used that stat last week in launching its campaign (see ThinkProgress), and Lincoln cited the number in a National […]
Celeste Monforton | August 12, 2011
Cross-posted from The Pump Handle. Tyler Zander, 17 and Bryce Gannon, 17 were working together on Thursday, August 4 at the Zaloudek Grain Co. in Kremlin, Oklahoma. They were operating a large floor grain aguer when something went terribly wrong. Oklahoma’s News9.com reports that Bryce Gannon’s legs became trapped in the auger, Tyler Zander went […]