THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 81, March 30, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
AND THE BEAT-DOWN GOES ON:
Proposed EPA Rules Will Do More Harm than Good for
Human Health, Especially for the Health of Minorities
By Paul K. Driessen
ANOTHER BOMBSHELL DROPPED BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ON THE U.S. DOMESTIC ELECTRICITY
GENERATION INDUSTRY: A TEN-POUND, 946 PAGE CLUSTER BOMB OF RULES TARGETING AMERICA'S COAL-FIRED
POWER PLANTS -- ABSENCE OF THE HEALTH RISKS & BENEFITS CLAIMED BY EPA IN ITS ASSERTIONS, PRESS RELEASES,
TESTIMONY, & PROPOSED RULEMAKINGS -- PRESIDENT OBAMA KEEPING HIS PROMISE TO CAUSE ELECTRICITY RATES TO
SKYROCKET & BANKRUPT ANY COMPANY TRYING TO BUILD A COAL-FIRED GENERATING PLANT IN THE U.S.A. -- EPA & THE
ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT WAGING WAR AGAINST AMERICA'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY & CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS
FULL STORY:
Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” and
“bankrupt” any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he and his über-regulators
are keeping.
President Obama energetically promotes wind and solar projects that require millions of acres of land and billions of
dollars in subsidies, to generate expensive, intermittent electricity and create jobs that cost taxpayers upwards of
$220,000 apiece – most of them in China.
His Interior Department is locking up more coal and petroleum prospects, via “wild lands” and other designations, and
dragging its feet on issuing leases and drilling permits. Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency is
challenging shale gas drilling and fracking, and imposing draconian carbon dioxide emission rules, now that Congress
and voters have rejected cap-tax-and-trade. That’s for starters.
The beat-down of hydrocarbon energy goes on. Oil, natural gas, and coal provide 85% of the energy that keeps America
humming, but the Obama administration is doing all it can to take it out of our mix. American voters, consumers, and
workers may want more drilling, mining and use of hydrocarbons, to get the economy going again. But the Obama
administration has a different agenda.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has unveiled another 946 pages of regulations that she claims will protect public
health. The regs cover 84 “dangerous pollutants” that are already being scrubbed out of power plant emission streams
by a host of innovative technologies. In fact, coal-fired generators now emit a fraction of what they did just 40 years
ago.
The most frequently cited of these pollutants is mercury. Higher doses cause well-known ill-health effects, from severe
neurological damage to brain damage and death. However, mercury has been all but eliminated in herbicides, light
switches, thermometers, and other products.
Its presence in coal and power plant emissions is likewise minimal and declining. The last serious cases of human health
impacts from mercury poisoning in the U.S.A. occurred decades ago, and coal-fired power plants remain the largest
source of U.S.-based man-made mercury only because other human sources are essentially gone.
Nevertheless, EPA and its anti-energy, anti-job allies like Climate Progress and Greenpeace are using mercury to
spearhead their latest campaign against a fuel that provides half of all U.S. electricity, and up to 95% in many
manufacturing states. Even worse, they claim minorities, somehow, are especially at risk from mercury and other power
plant pollutants. They even went so far as to hold a people-of-color-only press conference, to stir up fears and persuade
minority interest groups to support the new regulations.
A few elemental facts put the alleged “dangers” power plant mercury emissions in perspective, something which EPA
and its fellow campaigners steadfastly refuse to do. They also illustrate how EPA abuses science, statistics, and
tax-funded “education” campaigns to promote needless public anxiety and expand its control over our lives, jobs and
consumer choices, on a host of pollutants that pose little actual risk.
First and foremost, we are talking about a mere 41 tons of mercury per year. If that sounds like a lot, consider the
following.
The United Nations Environment Program estimates that the cremation of human remains results in 26 tons of
atmospheric mercury per year, from mercury-silver amalgams in teeth fillings.
China’s coal-fired power plants emit six times more mercury than their U.S. counterparts, and power plants worldwide
emit nearly twelve times as much, according to UN and other data. Since the atmosphere, jet streams and weather
systems are global phenomena, all this mercury is mixed with U.S. emissions,
But even these man-made sources are dwarfed by natural sources.
According to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, forest fires in the Lower 48 States and Alaska annually
put over 44 tons of mercury into the air. Root systems carry naturally occurring mercury from soils into their leaves and
wood; forest fires release the mercury into the atmosphere and also “roast” it out of burned soils. (Maybe it’s time to
ban forest fires – and wood-burning stoves.)
Recent studies by two Cambridge University scientists calculate that man and Mother Nature discharge up to 9100 tons
of mercury into the global atmospheric every year. Most comes from volcanoes, but subsea vents (the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge and elsewhere), geysers, and forest fires also play major roles.
In other words, U.S. power plants account for less than 0.5% of all the mercury in the air that we Americans breathe.
Even eliminating every ounce of this mercury will do nothing about the other 99.5% of that pollutant in America’s
atmosphere.
And, yet, EPA & Company demand that we do just that – at a cost of billions of dollars per year, to “protect” us from
infinitesimal or imaginary risks.
Perhaps our helpful bureaucrats and activists could put a Plexiglass bubble over the entire United States, to keep those
evil natural and Chinese gases out; plug Old Faithful and Kilauea; keep people (especially minorities) away from
Yellowstone National Park; and ban curly mercury-enhanced CFL bulbs.
Add up everything EPA is doing to tax, obstruct, and penalize coal use, and we are looking at huge increases in
electricity prices. These skyrocketing prices will hammer family budgets, especially in minority communities, impairing
nutrition and health, making it harder for many families to heat, cool, and pay for their homes, and increasing illness and
death.
Soaring energy prices will also force numerous companies to outsource manufacturing operations and jobs. Electricity
is a major cost for factories, offices, stores, hospitals, and schools. Every price hike hits them with another $10,000 to
$1,000,000 or more in new annual expenses that they must pass on to consumers, or address by laying off more
employees, whose families then suffer even more.
These hard realities must be viewed against 8.9% national, 11.6% Hispanic, and 15.3% black joblessness. (These figures
do not include people who have given up on finding a job, or have been forced to take part-time or temporary work.)
EPA’s unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats are being completely disingenuous, when they say their latest
ten-pound stack of rules will bring one milligram of net benefit to human health and welfare, especially for minorities.
EPA’s special “stakeholder briefing” on March 16, 2011, certainly conveys the correct image. Environmentalist activist
groups are holding the stake that this rogue agency intends to pound through the heart of America’s economic
recovery and civil rights progress.
EPA needs to start basing its policies and rules on science, reality, common sense, and comprehensive public health
considerations. Congress needs to reassert its authority over EPA.
Both need to focus on responsible, science-based air and water quality standards that address real health and economic
needs, and recognize that “human health and welfare” means more than eliminating every vestige of U.S. man-made
emissions, especially when we can do absolutely nothing about the vast majority of natural and man-made global
emissions.
America – and our economic and civil rights progress – are waiting.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Science, Ethics, & Human Health:
Human Health & Public Policy
Paul K. Driessen is Senior Policy Advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive
Tomorrow, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity