Meet the Members of Congress Who Want to Force EPA to Lie to Us About Whether the Air is Safe to Breathe
Posted May 22, 2012 in Curbing Pollution, Health and the Environment, U.S. Law and Policy
What does it say about the character of a Congress that would compel government officials to lie to you and me about the healthiness of the air we breathe?
28 members of Congress [pdf] voted to do that last week when the House Energy & Commerce Committee passed the so-called Gasoline Regulations Act or Gas Act. That bill would force the head of EPA to adopt unhealthy clean air standards for smog pollution if someone decides it costs too much to set healthy standards. The legislation then would compel EPA to misrepresent those unhealthy air quality standards to Americans as sufficient to achieve "clean air."
This is no different from Congress forcing doctors to lie to patients about their correct diagnoses if some government bureaucrat or economist or insurance company says it costs too much to treat the honestly diagnosed illness.
For over 40 years the Clean Air Act has required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to set honest air quality standards that are "requisite to protect the public health" with an "adequate margin of safety." [pdf] Clean Air standards must be honestly based on the best health science and medical understanding concerning how much pollution is harmful to humans. Standards may not be weakened or distorted by political or other non-medical factors.
Big polluters despise that protectiveness, honesty and health science foundation. For over a decade lobbyists for Big Oil and Big Coal have been fighting to weaken the Clean Air Act to eliminate clean air standards based on health science and medicine. Polluters want to force the acceptance of unhealthy air standards if the costs of cleaning up air pollution are undesirable.
Undesirable to whom? The corporate polluters that dirty our air and their shareholders, their hand-picked economists and lawyers, and politicians.
By severing clean air standards from science and human health, there is no end to the amount of political manipulation, deceit and corporate capitulation that would force Americans to breathe unsafe levels of air pollution.
Supporters of the GAS Act -- which the American Lung Assocation has rightly dubbed the GASP Act -- will deny that the legislation requires EPA to lie to Americans or accept unhealthy smog levels. But it is an inescapable reality that the legislation would force Americans to suffer unhealthy smog levels if honestly, accurately determined clean air standards fail the bill's politicized cost test.
The GASP Act requires EPA to set national air quality standards for smog at these unhealthy levels and then misrepresent to Americans that meeting these levels will provide clean, safe air. The bill knowingly compels unhealthy air if someone decides the costs are not worth it, with the science and medical studies identifying healthy air quality left on the cutting room floor.
Recognize that the Clean Air Act always has allowed costs to be considered when deciding how best to clean up unhealthy amounts of air pollution. Industry and government officials are allowed to select the most cost-effective, feasible methods for lowering smog emissions to levels that are safe. But cost never has been allowed to pervert the question of whether the air is safe to breathe. Insurance companies and bean counters don't get to make the medical diagnosis.
The full House of Representatives is expected to take up the GASP Act for a floor vote in the coming weeks. When that vote happens, I will update this post to identify all members voting to eliminate the Clean Air Act's health foundation.
But for now, let's meet the members of Congress on the Energy and Commerce Committee who voted last week to junk the over 40-year legal right to clean air in the United States based upon honest science and what is healthy for humans.
Fred Upton (R-MI)
Joe Barton (R-TX)
Cliff Stearns (R-FL)
Ed Whitfiled (R-KY)
John Shimkus (R-IL)
Joe Pitts (R-PA)
Greg Walden (R-OR)
Lee Terry (R-NE)
Sue Myrick (R-NC)
John Sullivan (R-OK)
Tim Murphy (R-PA)
Brian Bilbray (R-CA)
Steve Scalise (R-LA)
Bob Latta (R-OH)
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
Gregg Harper (R-MS)
Leonard Lance (R-NJ)
Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
Pete Olson (R-TX)
David McKinley (R-WV)
Cory Gardner (R-CO)
Mike Pompeo (R-KS)
Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)
Morgan Griffith (R-VA)
Mike Ross (D-AK)
Jim Matheson (D-UT)
John Barrow (D-GA)
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Comments
Sid Abma — May 24 2012 03:30 PM
And what about natural gas? It is now considered a renewable energy source.
It is this countries bridge fuel. It is clean and it can be consumed to well over 90% energy efficiency. It can be used so efficiently using the technology of Condensing Flue Gas Heat Recovery, that the WATER can even be recovered from this combusted fuel. It can reduce more TONS of CO2 than you can shake a stick at.
We need to increase the use of wind and solar, but for now we need the other CLEAN fuel, natural gas.
Zonker the Brainless — May 24 2012 05:07 PM
What level of smog is healthy? Why hasn't EPA already demanded that smog be reduced to background levels?
Because that would be ridiculous. Surely Congress didn't intend for EPA to shut down all manufacturing industries that emit ozone precursors. You can't ignore economic feasibility. All this act would do is make the consideration of economics more transparent, rather than hiding behind "adequate margin of safety" silliness that isn't defined by anybody anywhere.
It's preposterous that the basic principles of cost benefit analysis don't apply to the CAA rules. What's so special about health that it doesn't have to meet the same analytic and transparency requirements that worker safety or airplane safety or national security rules have to meet?
Manke — May 25 2012 08:22 AM
The republocratic push away from clean energy and air signals a need for radical re-assesment of life priorities, dosn't it?............. Who do these people in govt represent?......... What is the reason that so many people still vote them in office? They do have, however misguided, a followimg. .......... Our national govt has already dropped the ball on global energy policy leadership because of entrenched greed; old money interests controling govt... So long has it been in place that it controls the very "depended upon" taxing structure that supports the status quo. This becomes evident when every meaningful environmental legislation that gets popular attention is soon dismantled by the conservative right wing of the controlling "fools in charge", who will use any distracting fault finding to allign the clueless minions struggling to make a living in their already confused base of belief............. Ethics in government? What the hell does that mean? The very belief that "God" is outside, or "up there" ar anywhere but in our mind in the way to allow fear to determine who, or what we will hear. ...........Jet Setters will not discuss the ubiquitous contrails that obscure our atmosphere, and the very belief that money has meaning in itself is the golden calf on our altar of disgrace.