THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 164, June 25, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
CLEARING THE AIR: TRYING TO CORRECT THE DISINFORMATION
ABOUT "MERCURY & AIR TOXICS"
By Paul K. Driessen
THE OBAMA PLAN TO HAVE THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY IMPOSE ECONOMY-STRANGLING, JOB-KILLING
RULES FOR ELECTRICITY GENERATING PLANTS IN THE U.S.A.: EPA RULES THAT WILL CAUSE ENERGY PRICES TO
"SKYROCKET," COMPANIES BUILDING COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS TO "GO BANKRUPT," & THE NATION'S ENERGY,
ECONOMIC, INDUSTRIAL, & SOCIAL STRUCTURE TO BE "FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED" -- EPA RULES THAT WILL
IMPOSE HUGE COSTS, FOR FEW HEALTH OR ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS, BEYOND WHAT WE ARE ALREADY REALIZING
THROUGH STEADILY DECLINING EMISSIONS UNDER EXISTING REGULATIONS
FULL STORY:
Ever since public, congressional and union anger and anxiety persuaded the Environmental Protection Agency to delay
action on its economy-strangling carbon dioxide rules, EPA has been on a take-no-prisoners crusade to impose other
job-killing rules for electricity generating plants.
As President Obama said when America rejected cap-tax-and-trade, “there’s more than one way to skin the cat.” If
Congress won't cooperate, his EPA will lead the charge. Energy prices will “skyrocket.” Companies that want to build
coal-fired power plants will “go bankrupt.” His administration will “fundamentally transform” our nation’s energy,
economic, industrial and social structure.
EPA’s proposed “mercury and air toxics” rules for power plants are built on the false premise that we are still breathing
the smog, soot, and poisons that shrouded London, England, and Gary, Indiana, sixty years ago. In reality, U.S. air
quality improved steadily after the 1970 Clean Air Act was enacted.
Moreover, since 1990, even as U.S. coal use more than doubled, coal-fired power plant emissions declined even further:
58% for mercury, 67% for nitrogen oxides, 70% for particulates, 85% for sulfur dioxide – and just as significantly for
most of the other 80 pollutants that EPA intends to cover with its 946-pages of draconian proposed regulations.
It’s time to clear the political air – and scrub out some of the toxic disinformation that EPA and its allies have been
emitting for months, under a multi-million-dollar “public education” campaign that EPA has orchestrated and funded, to
frighten people into supporting its new rules. Public relations firms, religious and civil rights groups, environmentalist
activists, and college students are eagerly propagating the myths.
EPA’s “most wanted” outlaw is mercury. But, for Americans, this villain is as real as Freddy or Norman Bates. To turn
power plant mercury emissions into a mass killer, EPA cherry-picked studies and data, and ignored any that didn’t fit
its “slasher” film script. As my colleague Dr. Willie Soon and I pointed out in our Wall Street Journal and
Investor's Business Daily articles, U.S. power plants account for just 0.5% of mercury emitted into North
American’s air; the other 99.5% comes from natural and foreign sources.
Critics assailed our analysis, but the studies support us, not EPA – as is abundantly clear in Dr. Soon’s 85-page report,
available at www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org. The report and studies it cites fully support our conclusion that
America’s fish are safe to eat (in part because they contain selenium and are thus low in biologically available
methylmercury, mercury’s more toxic cousin), and blood mercury levels for American women and children are already
below safe levels established by the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies.
Not only are EPA’s mercury claims fraudulent. They are scaring people away from eating fish, which are rich in essential
fatty acids. In other words, EPA is actively harming people’s nutrition and health.
One of the more bizarre criticisms of our analysis contends that mercury released in forest fires “originates from
coal-burning power plants,” which supposedly shower the toxin onto trees, which release it back into the atmosphere
during arboreal conflagrations. In fact, mercury is as abundant in the earth’s crust as silver and selenium. It is absorbed
by trees through their roots – and their leaves, which absorb those 0.5% (power plant) and 99.5% (other) atmospheric
mercury components through their stomata.
Another bizarre criticism is that mercury isn’t the issue. The real problem is ultra-fine (2.5 micron) soot particles. So, now,
the “power plant mercury is poisoning babies and children” campaign was just a sideshow! Talk about changing the
subject. Now, suddenly, the alleged health benefits and lives saved would come from controlling soot particles. That
claim is as bogus as the anti-mercury scare stories.
Even data of the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration demonstrate that America’s air already
meets EPA’s national standard, which is equivalent to disseminating an ounce of soot (about one and a quarter
super-pulverized charcoal briquettes) across a volume of air one-half mile long, one-half mile wide and one story high.
That’s less than you’re likely to get from sitting in front of a campfire, fireplace or wood-burning stove, inhaling airborne
particulates, hydrocarbon gases, and heavy metals. (Search the internet for Danish, EPA, and U.S. Forest Service studies
and advisories on these popular “organic” heating and cooking methods.)
Simply put, EPA’s proposed rules will impose huge costs – for few health or environmental benefits, beyond what we are
already realizing through steadily declining emissions under existing regulations.
Besides bringing mythical health benefits, EPA claims its lower national emission standards will simply put all states and
utility companies “on the same level playing field.” This pious rhetoric may be fine for states that get little electricity from
coal. However, for states (especially manufacturing states) that burn coal to generate 48-98% of their electricity, the new
rules will be job, economy, and revenue killers.
Energy analyst Roger Bezdek estimates that utilities will have to spend over $130 billion to retrofit older plants, under the
measly three-year (2014) deadline that EPA is giving them, under a sweetheart court deal the agency brokered with radical
environmentalist groups. On top of that, utilities will have to spend another $30 billion a year for operations, maintenance,
and extra fuel for the energy-intensive scrubbers and other equipment they will be forced to install.
Many companies simply cannot justify those huge costs for older power plants. Thus Dominion Power, American Electric
Power, and other utilities have announced that they will simply close dozens of generating units, representing tens of
thousands of megawatts – enough to electrify tens of millions of homes and businesses. Illinois alone will lose nearly
3,500 MW of reliable, affordable, baseload electricity – with little but promises of intermittent pixie-dust wind turbine
electricity to replace it.
Electricity costs are set to skyrocket, just as President Obama promised. Consumers can expect to pay at least 20% more
in many states by 2014 or shortly thereafter. According to the Chicago Tribune, hard-pressed Illinois families and
businesses will shell out 40-60% more! How’s that for an incentive to ramp up production and hire more workers? How’s
that “hope and change” working out for families that had planned to fix the car, save for college and retirement, take a
vacation, get that long-postponed surgery?
For a mid-sized hospital or factory that currently pays $500,000 annually for electricity (including peak-demand charges),
those rate hikes could add $300,000 a year to its electricity bill. That’s equivalent to ten full-time entry-level employees
that now won't get hired, or will get laid off.
And it’s not just private businesses that will get hammered. As the Chicago Tribune notes, if the Chicago public
school system wants to keep the lights on and computers running for two semesters, by 2014, it will get hit for an extra
$2.7 million it doesn’t have, to pay for skyrocketing electricity costs.
Carry those costs through much of the U.S. economy – especially the 26 states that get 48-98% of their electricity from
coal-fired power plants – and we are talking about truly “fundamental transformations.” Millions will be laid off, millions
more won't be hired, millions of jobs will be shipped overseas – and millions will endure brownouts, blackouts, and
increasing social unrest.
EPA generally refuses to consider the economic effects of its regulations, except to insist that even its most oppressive
rules will generate benefits “far in excess” of any expected costs. Perhaps it will at least consider the obvious,
unavoidable, and monumental adverse physical and mental health impacts of its rate hikes and layoffs – on nutrition,
healthcare, depression, family violence, and civil rights progress.
The Environmental Protection Agency has always had a horse-blinder attitude about environmental policy. Under
Administrator Lisa Jackson, it has become a truly rogue agency.
It’s time for Congress, state legislatures, attorneys-general, courts, and We the People to bring some balance and
common sense into the picture. Otherwise, 9.1% unemployment – with Black and Hispanic unemployment even higher
– will soon look like boom times.
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 Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial
Equality, and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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