EPA gets tough on smog

Everyone has noticed it, it is no secret how the very air we breathe has been slowly deteriorating to the point that many cities now regularly post air quality warnings on their television, radio and newspaper news broadcasts.

After failing to enforce air quality standards imposed by the EPA decades ago, they are going to try again. Obviously, if those standards had been enforced when first introduced we would not be in the mess we are in today.

So, what is the EPA going to do differently this time? To start, they are ordering a multibillion-dollar expansion of efforts to clean up smog in cities and towns nationwide. Sounds like a plan. Corporations will of course not be bothered by it because they will slow-dance around in the court system delaying the requirements crying that they are too cost-restrictive for them, just as they did before, and nothing will ever come of it.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced it was tightening the amount of ozone, commonly known as smog, that will be allowed in the air. But the lower standard still falls short of what most health experts say is needed to significantly reduce heart and asthma attacks from breathing smog-clogged air. Falling short. Sound familiar? It should. The recent attempt to get automobile manufacturers to improve their cars fuel mileage and lower emission levels fell short too.

This government is more about talking a good game than actually taking the steps to do anything about it. All the while insuring that their corporate buddies don’t suffer any loss to their bottom line.

Admittedly it is a very big problem and just writing some stricter standards is not going to change anything.

The ‘most stringent standards ever’ claims EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson. But they are only going to be enforced in 345 counties out of the more than 700 monitored. That means that 355 counties are still going to continue polluting at their current rate. Fifty percent seems to be on par with the output level of the EPA. This is what we commonly refer to half-assed.

This new ‘get tough’ policy comes from the same people that refused to allow California and a host of other states to get tough on automobile pollution within their own states.

This administrator is ignoring two of the EPA’s own science advisory panels on air quality and children’s health by lowering the ozone parts per billion from 80 to 75 when the panels have proof that it needs to be lowered to 60. In this move, Administrator Johnson is leaving the most vulnerable members of our society, children, the elderly and asthma suffers to fend for themselves. Then he has the nerve to make the statements that “…I adhered to the science” and the new standard will ”yield health benefits valued between $2 billion and $19 billion."

Sure its going to cost us more to clean up this mess, this is what happens when you allow polluters to not adhere to standards for so long. Since you did not enforce the previous standards what makes us believe you will enforce these?

The utility and oil companies of course opposed stricter standards, even at this very minute level, saying it will increase their costs and therefore ‘hurt the economy’. Give me a break. The oil company is especially being audacious when they claim to care about the economy in light of the fact they are instrumental in raising oil prices to record level.

George W. Bush, in his usual corporate-profit driven mindset, wants to over throw the 1970 federal Clean Air Act that says costs cannot be a factor when setting health standards.

Health experts and environmentalists view the setting of health standards without consideration of cost as essential for assuring public health. As well they should. This clearly shows Bush and Johnson as protecting corporate profit over protecting the public.

Corporations are complaining about the stricter standards now as a preliminary for lobbying for more protection from the government in the form of tax breaks and incentives, which they will most likely get. They care very little about the economy because the government will always bail them out.

The setting of this new standard is nothing more than setting up corporations for getting more money from our government. It has nothing to do with protecting us or our environment.

Once again we see more talk and a little less action.