EPA Smog Rules Freakout Is Ridiculous

[UrbScotty]

First of all, let’s stop with the stupid sports metaphors. Really. If you need an analogy, smog regulations are a low card in a high stakes game, and Lisa Jackson is the queen of hearts when Obama needs spades. If you insist on baseball, smog reduction is a run, and Ray LaHood is Obama’s designated hitter. But really, let’s kill the sports metaphors.

One way to lower the amount of smog in American cities comes with through thick binders of all-powerful EPA regulations. Another way involves transportation spending priorities and vehicle emissions standards — policies — that also form a thick set of binders. Either way involves policy in binders. Either way reduces pollution.

Friday’s progressive freakout over nixed EPA smog rules is not really about fighting smog, but the myopia of issue focus in the blogosphere and the inflated currency of online outrage. Transportation is a wonky subject that often flies below the radar. It is not sexy or cute. Much of its advocacy is local. But federal transportation policy is also crucial in reducing smog levels as well as achieving other progressive ends.

The ingredients of smog come from tailpipes. The way to reduce the impact of modern civilization on the environment is to make those tailpipes better and cleaner. To accomplish that, the president has leveraged his opportunity to force change on the auto industry.

http://www.osborneink.com/2011/09/epa-smog-rules-freakout-is-ridiculou.html

The article goes on to add that the EPA rules would easily be reversed by a Republican anyway.

[tularetom]

1. All very true but this is America where perception is reality

and symbolism reigns supreme. In a week where Obama acceded to republican demands to change the night of his speech and dropped a lot of very broad hints that he would approve a pipeline from Canada through the US to Texas, so that oil could be refined and shipped to China, it makes him look like either a corporatist or a patsy.

And neither is a label he needs when he runs for re-election.

[ChandlerJr]

2. EPA rules would easily be reversed by a Republican anyway

But they weren't, they were reversed by a Democrat.

Not to mention that President Al Gore seems to be a bit alarmed by the whole thing.

[Demit]

3. My favorite defense in that article's thread is that Obama has 'taken the course that's possible'.

What a stirring sentiment! Just imagine if he had campaigned on that:

"There's a lot I won't even try to do because it's not possible." Or,

"I'm not going to bother instituting any regulations because, y'know, Republicans would just reverse them anyway."

Man, that fires me right up to vote for him again.

[Marnie]

4. So becasue its wonky Obama sells out childre and

adults with asthma and other chronic respiratory problems.
That means more money spent on medications, more ER visits, more lost work and school days.

Anything and everything that the government does to harm people's health, costs the economy a lot of money. So the gain in business profits is gained at the expense of people's health, money and lives, again.

Obama is just as willing to sell people's lives ad health off cheap as the Republicans are.

[patrice]

5. Amy Goodman interviewed a SME on Clean Air Act standard setting process.

Dr. Roger McCllelan, past chair of EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory committee, 30 years of experience with the EPA clean air standard setting process, made the following significant criticisms of EPA role in what happened to these regulations:

- Clean Air Act sets review of science 5 years,
- Last such review was March 2008,
- Last review was based on Science done in 2005,
- EPA subsequently lowered the standard from 84 ppb to 75 ppb,
- EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, acting in it's scientific and policy advisory capacities, had advised to make it 70ppb,
- EPA's current chair, Jackson, decided to reclaim the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee's policy advice,
- Jackson also set a review of the previous 2008 standard setting process in motion,
- That review is occurring 3.5 years into the life of the 2008 standards, which were based on science that is now over 10 years old,
- Meanwhile the regular 5 year review process defined by the Clean Air Act is beginning and is expected to deliver newly proposed standards, based upon more current science, in 2012 which will be finalized in 2013.

Amy Goodman also talked to John Walke, of the NRDC, who said all of the things that you have been seeing everywhere about the President being pro-polluter and unconcerned for people's health.

No one in this interview said that the standards would cost jobs. The only question related to that was implied by whether Jackson was increasing the regulatory burden on industries in their efforts to comply by retroactively reclaiming the previous standard, increasing EPA workload (and basically discarding previous work) by re-reviewing the 2008 standards AND initiating the new Clean Air Act standard setting process for 2013.

Amy Goodman's interview of Walke & McClellan is dated today Weds 9/7/11

[patrice]

6. Here's the link to Goodman's interview with Walke and McClellan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ayPvZ95mGo