By Alan Caruba
Is it surprising that the
Environmental Protection Agency continues to tell big fat lies about anything it
wants to ban, but is reluctant to show the “science” on which the bans are
based?
There is currently a piece of
legislation under consideration by Congress, the Secret Science Reform Act, to
force the EPA to disclose its scientific and technical information before
proposing or finalizing any regulation.
This is what Nicolas Loris of The
Heritage Foundation had to say regarding the mercury air and toxics rule that
the EPA claims would produce $53 billion to $140 billion in annual health and
environmental benefits. “The two studies that represent the scientific
foundation for 1997 ozone and PM2.5 National Ambient Air Quality Standards are
highly questionable and the data concealed, even though the studies were paid
for by federal taxpayers and thus should be public
property.”
In addition to claims about carbon
dioxide as a dreaded “greenhouse” gas, methane is also getting the attention of
those opposed to “fracking”, a technique that has provided access to both
natural gas and oil. James M. Taylor, a Senior Fellow with The
Heartland Institute, a free market think tank, noted in January that
“Natural gas has high methane content, but the methane is converted to energy
when natural gas is burnt.” Citing U.S. Energy Information Administration data,
Taylor noted “The ongoing decline in methane emissions supplements ongoing
declines in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.” Since 2000 both are down between 6%
AND 9%.
The EPA is forever claiming billions
in "health benefits" that result from their regulations. The public never gets
to see the data on which such claims are based. The regulations, however, cost
billions.
The day before Thanksgiving, the EPA
announced that it intends to propose an updated national standard for
ground-level ozone, otherwise known as smog, based in part on the enforcement of
rules concerning mercury. The previous day, the Supreme Court said it would
review the agency’s standards requiring reductions of mercury emissions and
other elements the EPA regards as toxic air pollution.
To put all this in perspective, in
August CNS
News’ Penny Starr reported on a study by the National Association of
Manufacturers regarding the EPA’s proposed regulation of ozone. It found that
“it could be the costliest federal rule by reducing the Gross National Product
by $270 billion per year and $3.4 trillion from 2017 to 2040, and adds $3.3
trillion in compliance costs for the same period.” NAM president, Jay Timmons, said “The
regulation has the capacity to stop the manufacturing comeback in its
tracks.”
Concurrently with NAM, the American
Petroleum Institute released an analysis of the NAM study that said “The
nation’s air quality has improved over the past several years, and ozone
emissions will continue to decline without new regulations.” NAM’s vice
president of energy and resources policy, Ross Eisenberg, said, “We are rapidly
approaching a point where we are requiring manufacturers to do the
impossible.”
That, however, is exactly what the
ozone regulation is intended to do. This has nothing to do with health and
everything to do with destroying the nation’s power producers and manufacturers,
reducing vital electrical energy, and forcing factories of every description to
close.
At the upper levels of the atmosphere,
the stratosphere, ozone is essential to the survival of life on Earth because
ozone filters harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from sunlight. Otherwise the
radiation would damage both plant and animal life. The reason you get sunburned
is that too much UV radiation has caused it. Like everything else in nature, too
much or too little determines the harm or benefit it provides, but that too is
largely determined by nature.
Ozone is a form of elemental oxygen,
but it’s not something you want to breathe. As Wikipedia notes, “It is not
emitted directly by car engines or by industrial operations, but formed by the
reaction of sunlight on air containing hydrocarbons
and nitrogen oxides that react to form ozone directly at the source of the
pollution or many kilometers down wind.” The initial mandate of the EPA to clean
the air and water has been achieved. That is why smog is relatively rare
nationwide. Further regulation is regressive.
As for mercury, in 2011 the EPA issued
946 pages of new rules requiring U.S. power plants to sharply reduce their
emissions of mercury even though they were already quite low. As with the
proposed ozone rules, the EPA claimed that they would cost $10.9 billion
annually to implement, but would save 17,000 lives while generating $140 billion
in health benefits. This is all just hogwash. Such figures are just plucked out
of the air or, worse, based on “science” the public paid for but is not allowed
to see!
Does anybody find it bizarre that,
while the EPA is trying to remove the tiniest amounts of mercury in the
environment, in 2011 Congress passed a law eliminate the incandescent light bulb
and required their replacement by fluorescent lights that contain
mercury?
As Willie Soon and Paul Driessen wrote
in a 2011 Wall Street Journal commentary, “Mercury has always existed naturally
in Earth’s environment. Mercury is found in air, water, rocks, soil and trees,
which absorb it from the environment.” They noted that “Since our power plants
account for less than 0.5% of all the mercury in the air we breathe,
eliminating every milligram of it will do nothing about the other 99.5% in our
atmosphere.”
The fundamental EPA lies about ozone
and mercury involve the issue of toxicity. Since both are a natural part of the
Earth, and since the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and since life expectancy
has been increasing dramatically in recent decades, the likelihood that either
represents a threat requiring the expenditure of billions to reduce tiny amounts
of their emissions is based on environmental ideology, not on science.
Even if it was based on alleged
science we would, as noted, not be allowed to see the data. If this reminds you
of the way ObamaCare was foisted on “the stupid voters”, you’re right. The EPA
hopes you are stupid enough not to realize that it is engaged in the destruction
of the economy.
© Alan Caruba, 2014
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