Yea! The EPA job killing machine is dead! Long live the job creators in their victory over Obama the Evil Muslim Keyan Marxist Fascist! Obama has reversed course again, by rejecting the unanimous opinion of the EPA’s scientists to issue regulations to lower ozone pollution, but he saved American jobs, right? Except when has the EPA killed jobs before? Let’s look into our past instead of looking at Republican predictions of the future. Specifically let’s look at the effects of those horrible stop acid rain regs. The Republicans at the time predicted billions and billions of costs and (cue the drum roll) a major loss of jobs. What really happened?
For example, when the Environmental Protection Agency first proposed amendments to the Clean Air Act aimed at reducing acid rain caused by power plant emissions, the electric utility industry warned that they would cost $7.5 billion and tens of thousands of jobs. But the cost of the program has been closer to $1 billion, said Dallas Burtraw, an economist at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit research group on the environment. And the E.P.A., in a paper published this year, cited studies showing that the law had been a modest net creator of jobs through industry spending on technology to comply with it.
Damn. One Billion Dollars was all it cost to stop pouring acid rain into the lakes and streams where I live? That’s more than we lend those scumbags “job creators” on Wall Street every hour to –uh — wreck the economy. Could the “Job creators” be misinformed, or are they simply lying? Let’s look at another example, from Florida where Congresswoman Sandy Adams claimed regulations to clean up Florida’s water was a mass conspiracy to help polluters and “kill jobs.” Was she right?
Make no mistake, Florida needs these new standards. A near-dead Lake Apopka, a chronically sick St. Johns River and the region’s many algae-bloom-filled springs cry out for them. And with the NRC scientists examining the cost of making improvements to sewage plants, stormwater systems and septic systems, we expect they’ll show that the financial burden from the standards will be significantly less than the $1,000 per year per sewage customer that opponents contend. The EPA’s own estimate: $11 per resident.
If the arguments against the EPA’s tougher nutrient standards sound familiar, that’s because they’ve been used over and over again by reactionary lawmakers to eviscerate sensible regulations. The anti-environment gang in Tallahassee killed state growth laws they said killed jobs. What nonsense.
Well, that’s a biased “ecoterrorist” source. Obviously. Just like this “study” by the EPA examining the benefits and costs of the Clean Air Act over the period 1990 to 2020. Here’s the short version:
A new report, released by the EPA this month (March 2011), analyzes the costs and benefits from the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA) as they relate to the economy, public health and the environment. It found that the benefits from CAAA regulation far outweigh the costs by a factor of 30 to 1 with high-benefit estimates exceeding costs 90 to 1. Even low-benefit estimates found gains exceed costs 3 to 1. According to the analysis, CAAA will continue to better Americans in the near future; for the year 2020 alone, benefits will reach $2 trillion and save 230,000 people from premature death.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated, “The Clean Air Act’s decades-long track record of success has helped millions of Americans live healthier, safer and more productive lives. This report outlines the extraordinary health and economic benefits of one of our nation’s most transformative environmental laws and demonstrates the power of bipartisan approaches to protecting the health of the American people from pollution in our environment.”
Would you like to see some colorful graphics and charts illustrating her statements? I thought so. Here’s one showing the cost of regulation versus the benefits. Call it the Balloon within a balloon graph:
Whoa, Nellie! Two Trillion Dollaros in savings for a cost of a mere $65 Billion over 30 years (How much again did we pour down the Banksters Rat Hole give Wall Street job creators and Big Oil job creators over the past couple of years?) Sure sounds like a great deal to me.
But there’s more!
But there’s more!
The extent to which estimated benefits exceed estimated costs and an in‐depth analysis of uncertainties indicate that it is extremely unlikely the costs of 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment programs would exceed their benefits under any reasonable combination of alternative assumptions or methods identified during this study. Even if one were to adopt the extreme assumption that air pollution has no effect on premature mortality –or that avoiding such effects has no value—the benefits of reduced nonfatal health effects and visibility improvements alone are more than twice the total cost of compliance with 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment requirements. […]
Economy-wide modeling was also conducted to estimate the effect of the 1990 Amendments on overall U.S. economic growth and the economic welfare of American households. When some of the beneficial economic effects of clean air programs were incorporated along with the costs of these programs, economy‐wide modeling projected net overall improvements in economic growth and welfare. These improvements are projected to occur because cleaner air leads to better health and productivity for American workers as well as savings on medical expenses for air pollution related health problems. The beneficial economic effects of these two improvements more than offset the costly effects across the economy of expenditures for pollution control.
Let’s look at another chart shall we?
Gosh darn, there the EPA goes again, disputing the facts the “job creators” at The Exxon funded Heritage Foundation and other conservative and business groups assert that the EPA and its regulations are “job-killers.” They even forced Mr. First Black Muslim President Who May or May Not Have Been Born in the USA to adopt their rhetoric that the EPA “kills jobs.”
Just days after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced the House would begin voting to repeal proposed air quality regulations that he said would prevent job growth, President Obama instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its proposed ozone regulations.
“I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover,” Obama said in a statement.
Obama said the standards are already being revised and would have to be updated again in 2013.
“Ultimately, I did not support asking state and local governments to begin implementing a new standard that will soon be reconsidered,” Obama said in the statement.
Funny, but that’s not what his EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, said just days before President Obama told her to shove her agency’s regulations where the sun don’t shine:
Some in Washington are working to weaken safeguards and undermine laws that protect our families from pollution that causes asthma, cancer and other illnesses, especially in children. Big polluters are lobbying Congress for loopholes to use our air and water as dumping grounds. The result won’t be more jobs; it will be more mercury in our air and water and more health threats to our kids. As a senior official from the Bush EPA recently wrote, “Abolishing the EPA will not cause a revival of America’s economy, but it will certainly result in a major decline in public health and our quality of life.” […]
When big polluters distort EPA’s proposals as a drag on our economy, they ignore the fact that clean air, clear water and healthy workers are all essential to American businesses.
They also overlook the innovations in clean technology that are creating new jobs right now. The CEO of Michigan’s Clean Light Green Light recently said, “EPA has opened the doors to innovation and new economic opportunities. By spurring entrepreneurs who have good ideas and the drive to work hard, the EPA has helped give rise to countless small businesses in clean energy, advanced lighting, pollution control and more, which in turn are creating jobs.”
It’s time to recognize that delays of long-expected health standards leave companies uncertain about investing in clean infrastructure, environmental retrofits, and the new workers needed to do those jobs. These are potential opportunities for engineers and scientists, as well as pipefitters, welders and steelworkers. Pledges to weaken or slow proposed standards, many of which have been developed over years and with industry input, prevent businesses from investing in those jobs.
Some leaders in Congress have already stated their intent to roll back critical environmental protections when they return to session. Misleading claims are translating into actions that could dismantle clean air standards that protect our families from mercury, arsenic, smog and carbon dioxide. All of this is happening despite the evidence of history, despite the evidence of Congress’ own objective Research Service, and despite the need for job creation strategies that go well beyond simply undermining protections for our health, our families and our communities.
By “Some leaders in Congress” she meant Republican Congressional slugs members like Eric the “Let’s use Debt Ceiling Bill to hold America Hostage” Cantor. Who knew that her boss was going to agree with those “Job-creatin’ Big Polluter campaign contribution takin'” Republicans only days after she wrote her opinion piece for the Huffington Post.
I guess she didn’t get the memo:
Well I’m sure this is a wily and brilliant electoral stratigcalistical maneuver by the President’s ace campaign re-election team. I’m sure someone will tell me it is, in any event. I can’t wait until President Obama’s next brilliant move to destroy the Professional Left’s (e.g., people like EPA scientists and his own EPA Chief and that devil Paul Krugman) undue influence on Democratic Politics, which is, as we all know the only real obstacle to improving his approval rating, his re-election and a safer, more secure America — for “Job Creators.”
