FrankRep
01-11-2010, 01:00 PM
The EPA is issuing even more draconian ozone or pollution regulations, further hampering American prosperity. By James Heiser
EPA Regulations vs. Freedom and Prosperity (https://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5827-epa-regulations-vs-freedom-and-prosperity)
James Heiser | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
11 January 2010
The sweeping actions of the federal agencies ought to have more Americans wondering whether our nation still has a constitutional legislative branch of government in any sense of the term other than vestigial. Each day seems to bring yet another level of regulation which purports to protect us, in essence, from ourselves. Of late, regulation mania has been most notable in transportation. The way things are going, the speculation that taking an international flight will probably soon mean passengers will end up dressed in a government-issued smock for the flight, confined to a human-shaped shipping container, and stacked in windowless cargo planes isn’t as funny as it once might have been.
A few weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) briefly grabbed the headlines when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced an “endangerment finding” (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2497-epa-declares-carbon-dioxide-a-danger-to-public-health) concerning carbon dioxide, the fourth most common gas in Earth’s atmosphere. It seems that the U.S. Senate just was not moving fast enough on “cap and trade” prior to the Copenhagen Conference — how helpful it was for the EPA to skip over all the pesky institutions of representative government to provide the “Change Americans will be Compelled to Believe In.”®
Now the EPA has announced further regulation of another atmospheric trace gas, Ozone. According to the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010701926.html):
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed limiting the allowable amount of pollution-forming ozone in the air from 75 to between 60 and 70 parts per billion for any eight-hour period, significantly tightening rules the Bush administration had set for the nation's most widespread air pollutant. ...
The final target that the Obama administration adopts will have huge implications for the regulations state and local officials will have to set in the coming months to meet the new federal requirements. Power plants and motor vehicles are significant emitters of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and other chemical compounds, which form ozone when exposed to sunlight, but sources as small as gas lawnmowers could face restrictions depending on what EPA chooses as its ultimate goal.
Yes, that’s right: The two-cycle gas lawnmower is the destroyer of worlds. Thank goodness we’ve got Lisa Jackson to protect us. There is no realm of human activity so trivial as to escape the watchful eye of government regulators.
"Smog in the air we breathe poses a very serious health threat, especially to children and individuals suffering from asthma and lung disease," EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a statement. "Using the best science to strengthen these standards is a long overdue action that will help millions of Americans breathe easier and live healthier."
Depending on the level of the final standard, EPA estimates the proposal will cost between $19 billion and $90 billion to implement and will yield health benefits of between $13 billion and $100 billion. The proposal would translate into thousands of avoided premature deaths by 2020, though the exact number depends on what exact limit the agency adopts.
Well, my son may breathe easier at the idea of Administrator Jackson regulating our family’s self-propelled gasoline lawnmower out of existence — until he realizes that it will be replaced by teen-powered reel mower. But among the crazy points of this entire round of regulation (and I realize that this is what one might term a ‘target rich environment’ for such a designation) is the bland way in which the EPA throws out a cost/benefit analysis that makes ‘back of the envelope’ figures look like a careful scientific study. Costs of $19 to $90 billion? Health benefits of $13 to $100 billion? Well, dear reader, the appropriate descriptives for such calculation are terms such as “wild guesses” and “wishful thinking.” When the bureaucracy throws out numbers like this, it is probably safe to assume this means that they actually think the cost will be at least $90 billion, and the benefit will be $13 billion. But regardless of the calculations, one ought to ask: “Who will be saving the money? Who will be spending the money?”
The main ‘contribution’ of the various alphabet soup agencies (EPA, USDA, ED, HHS, DHS, HUD, etc.) to the average American is not greater longevity, wealth, education, or security — at least, certainly not at a level proportionate to the cost, financial and otherwise. No, what these agencies ‘provide’ us with is diminished productivity through time wasted “jumping through hoops,” heightened anxiety over the complexity of complying with the dictates of overlapping regulatory authorities, and, on occasion, genuinely frightening infringements on our constitutional liberties.
It is not that each and every action undertaken by the federal agencies is somehow inherently evil or corrupt. Far from it. Sometimes regulations are downright common sense or are at least not utterly counter productive. But every program, every regulation, at best serves the interests of one community, or one industry, over another. Whenever a regulation is imposed the full power of the federal government may be brought to the aid of one private interest against another.
Some readers will no doubt protest: “Cleaner air is in everyone’s interests!,” and presented in such abstract terms, it is an undeniably true statement. But “cleaner air” does not, if you’ll pardon a bad pun, “exist in a vacuum”— environmental regulation always comes at a cost and that cost must be paid by the people who are supposedly being aided by such regulations. The cost of regulations will be passed along to the consumers, and when weighing the health benefits of cleaner air, one must also weigh the health cost of elderly and lower income people setting the thermostat lower in the winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes as well as they could before.
The recent revelation that the EPA and USDA are working together to, in essence, spread pollutants from the waste of coal-fired power plants (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2688-epa-program-spreads-toxins-on-americas-farmland) on American farmlands stands in marked contrast to the righteous eco-warrior image the EPA tries to inculcate. Trying to reconcile such inconsistencies into a rational, uniform policy will simply make your head hurt. In the end, the benefits of the regulation are doubtful or debated, but the costs are very real. And what is certain is that the seemingly-ever expanding regulatory power of government is most certainly leaving us all less free.
SOURCE:
https://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5827-epa-regulations-vs-freedom-and-prosperity
EPA Regulations vs. Freedom and Prosperity (https://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5827-epa-regulations-vs-freedom-and-prosperity)
James Heiser | John Birch Society (http://www.jbs.org/)
11 January 2010
The sweeping actions of the federal agencies ought to have more Americans wondering whether our nation still has a constitutional legislative branch of government in any sense of the term other than vestigial. Each day seems to bring yet another level of regulation which purports to protect us, in essence, from ourselves. Of late, regulation mania has been most notable in transportation. The way things are going, the speculation that taking an international flight will probably soon mean passengers will end up dressed in a government-issued smock for the flight, confined to a human-shaped shipping container, and stacked in windowless cargo planes isn’t as funny as it once might have been.
A few weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) briefly grabbed the headlines when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced an “endangerment finding” (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2497-epa-declares-carbon-dioxide-a-danger-to-public-health) concerning carbon dioxide, the fourth most common gas in Earth’s atmosphere. It seems that the U.S. Senate just was not moving fast enough on “cap and trade” prior to the Copenhagen Conference — how helpful it was for the EPA to skip over all the pesky institutions of representative government to provide the “Change Americans will be Compelled to Believe In.”®
Now the EPA has announced further regulation of another atmospheric trace gas, Ozone. According to the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/07/AR2010010701926.html):
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed limiting the allowable amount of pollution-forming ozone in the air from 75 to between 60 and 70 parts per billion for any eight-hour period, significantly tightening rules the Bush administration had set for the nation's most widespread air pollutant. ...
The final target that the Obama administration adopts will have huge implications for the regulations state and local officials will have to set in the coming months to meet the new federal requirements. Power plants and motor vehicles are significant emitters of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and other chemical compounds, which form ozone when exposed to sunlight, but sources as small as gas lawnmowers could face restrictions depending on what EPA chooses as its ultimate goal.
Yes, that’s right: The two-cycle gas lawnmower is the destroyer of worlds. Thank goodness we’ve got Lisa Jackson to protect us. There is no realm of human activity so trivial as to escape the watchful eye of government regulators.
"Smog in the air we breathe poses a very serious health threat, especially to children and individuals suffering from asthma and lung disease," EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a statement. "Using the best science to strengthen these standards is a long overdue action that will help millions of Americans breathe easier and live healthier."
Depending on the level of the final standard, EPA estimates the proposal will cost between $19 billion and $90 billion to implement and will yield health benefits of between $13 billion and $100 billion. The proposal would translate into thousands of avoided premature deaths by 2020, though the exact number depends on what exact limit the agency adopts.
Well, my son may breathe easier at the idea of Administrator Jackson regulating our family’s self-propelled gasoline lawnmower out of existence — until he realizes that it will be replaced by teen-powered reel mower. But among the crazy points of this entire round of regulation (and I realize that this is what one might term a ‘target rich environment’ for such a designation) is the bland way in which the EPA throws out a cost/benefit analysis that makes ‘back of the envelope’ figures look like a careful scientific study. Costs of $19 to $90 billion? Health benefits of $13 to $100 billion? Well, dear reader, the appropriate descriptives for such calculation are terms such as “wild guesses” and “wishful thinking.” When the bureaucracy throws out numbers like this, it is probably safe to assume this means that they actually think the cost will be at least $90 billion, and the benefit will be $13 billion. But regardless of the calculations, one ought to ask: “Who will be saving the money? Who will be spending the money?”
The main ‘contribution’ of the various alphabet soup agencies (EPA, USDA, ED, HHS, DHS, HUD, etc.) to the average American is not greater longevity, wealth, education, or security — at least, certainly not at a level proportionate to the cost, financial and otherwise. No, what these agencies ‘provide’ us with is diminished productivity through time wasted “jumping through hoops,” heightened anxiety over the complexity of complying with the dictates of overlapping regulatory authorities, and, on occasion, genuinely frightening infringements on our constitutional liberties.
It is not that each and every action undertaken by the federal agencies is somehow inherently evil or corrupt. Far from it. Sometimes regulations are downright common sense or are at least not utterly counter productive. But every program, every regulation, at best serves the interests of one community, or one industry, over another. Whenever a regulation is imposed the full power of the federal government may be brought to the aid of one private interest against another.
Some readers will no doubt protest: “Cleaner air is in everyone’s interests!,” and presented in such abstract terms, it is an undeniably true statement. But “cleaner air” does not, if you’ll pardon a bad pun, “exist in a vacuum”— environmental regulation always comes at a cost and that cost must be paid by the people who are supposedly being aided by such regulations. The cost of regulations will be passed along to the consumers, and when weighing the health benefits of cleaner air, one must also weigh the health cost of elderly and lower income people setting the thermostat lower in the winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes as well as they could before.
The recent revelation that the EPA and USDA are working together to, in essence, spread pollutants from the waste of coal-fired power plants (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/2688-epa-program-spreads-toxins-on-americas-farmland) on American farmlands stands in marked contrast to the righteous eco-warrior image the EPA tries to inculcate. Trying to reconcile such inconsistencies into a rational, uniform policy will simply make your head hurt. In the end, the benefits of the regulation are doubtful or debated, but the costs are very real. And what is certain is that the seemingly-ever expanding regulatory power of government is most certainly leaving us all less free.
SOURCE:
https://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5827-epa-regulations-vs-freedom-and-prosperity