The Fresno Bee’s Mark Grossi ran a piece this weekend about local deaths caused by air pollution. It must have left readers shaking their heads; indeed, that seems to have been the point. Here’s the lede:
The more than 800 people who died prematurely this year from breathing dirty San Joaquin Valley air are worth $6.63 million each, economists say. Relatives don't collect a dime, but society is willing to pay someone this price. Confused? You're not alone.
The story goes on to discuss just a few of the absurdities inherent in the process by which regulators put a dollar value on human lives lost – statistical lives, as they coldly refer to them. Grossi notes, for example, that different lives are valued differently – children’s lives are worth less than adults’. By the end of the piece, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that elaborate statistical methodologies are used to develop numbers that add up but still make no sense!
But it’s the premise of the story – that air pollution has caused 800 premature deaths this year in the San Joaquin Valley – that ought to grab our attention. It’s right there in the first sentence, but it’s all but overwhelmed by the statistical smokescreen that follows.
In fact, estimates are that somewhere around 70,000 Americans die prematurely from air pollution per year. That’s more than die in auto accidents (40,000 or so), and more than die of all but a handful of diseases. If air pollution were a disease – rather than something willingly inflicted on us by large, usually profit-making, institutions – it’d be the eighth leading killer on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s list, trailing heart diseases and cancer, but ahead of the flu/pneumonia, and diseases of the liver and kidneys.
As it happens, obscuring the hard reality that we tolerate a huge number of deaths in the name of not overburdening polluters with “regulatory red tape” is almost certainly one of the reasons opponents of regulation warm to such statistical methods. It works for them. Think how much more powerful those numbers would be if we knew the names, faces, friends and families of those 800 victims.
In fact, given the death rate from air pollution, many of us probably do know a few victims. We just don’t know it. That makes it easier to avoid explaining to them why saving their lives isn’t worth the cost to economic production. That’s one of several reasons why it’s important that policymakers not buy into the myth that the costs and benefits of specific regulations can be neatly calculated, and that regulations are only worthwhile if cost-benefit analysts determine that they improve economic efficiency.
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Matthew Freeman | December 30, 2008
The Fresno Bee’s Mark Grossi ran a piece this weekend about local deaths caused by air pollution. It must have left readers shaking their heads; indeed, that seems to have been the point. Here’s the lede: The more than 800 people who died prematurely this year from breathing dirty San Joaquin Valley air are worth […]
Matthew Freeman | December 29, 2008
David Fahrenthold had a powerful article in Saturday’s Washington Post on the failures of Chesapeake Bay cleanup efforts. The lede: Government administrators in charge of an almost $6 billion cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay tried to conceal for years that their effort was failing — even issuing reports overstating their progress — to preserve the […]
Matthew Freeman | December 24, 2008
The Mercatus Center is out with a new report focused on midnight regulations — the last-minute regs pushed through by Presidents even as their successor’s inaugural parade reviewing stand is being constructed on the front stoop of the White House. President Bush and his political appointees at regulatory agencies are making considerable use of their […]
Matthew Freeman | December 23, 2008
It breaks no new ground to observe that the Bush Administration’s record on respecting science and scientists is dismal. Three examples tell the tale: The President’s 2001 decision to severely restrict federal support for stem cell research; The President’s embrace of Intelligent Design – the latest ruse for insinuating the religious doctrine of Creationism into […]
Matthew Freeman | December 22, 2008
Last year at about this time, the toy giant Mattel was up to its ears in recalled toys – more than 20 million of them to be specific. Not a good posture for a toy company right before Christmas. Nevertheless, there’s an argument to be made that Mattel caught something of a PR break […]
James Goodwin | December 19, 2008
The past few weeks, Congress has been working on an economic stimulus bill intended to jolt the U.S. economy back to life. Earlier in the week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi projected that the bill will combine roughly $400 billion in infrastructure spending with roughly $200 billion of targeted tax cuts. According to its […]
Margaret Clune Giblin | December 18, 2008
From a developmental standpoint, the 280 or so days between conception and birth are among the most important in a person’s entire life. During this period, pregnant women are cautioned to avoid a wide variety of exposures that can inhibit fetal organ development and growth. However, a recent report highlights the risk posed by one […]
Shana Campbell Jones | December 17, 2008
Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. — Thomas Jefferson Last week, I […]
Joseph Tomain | December 16, 2008
President-elect Obama’s announcement of his energy team clearly signals a dramatic change from the energy policy of all past presidents not only from the past administration. This team will oversee a new direction for future energy policy, especially pertaining to climate change. With these appointments and in his remarks, the President-elect identifies several strong […]