Clear Skies is a Lie

I can’t figure out why the public isn’t outraged over the obvious disregard for human health that comes with provisions of President Bushes’ Clear Skies Act. This is just one in a long list of legislation proposed by the Bush administration that does the exact opposite of its title. The Clear Skies Act makes our skies less clear by so many measurable standards that the title could only have been selected by a room full of comedians. Clear Skies? I don’t think so.

According the National Resource Defense Counsel, “The Clear Skies legislation sets new targets for emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and nitrogen oxides from U.S. power plants. But these targets are weaker than those that would be put in place if the Bush administration simply implemented and enforced the existing law! Compared to current law, the Clear Skies plan would allow three times more toxic mercury emissions, 50 percent more sulfur emissions, and hundreds of thousands more tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides. It would also delay cleaning up this pollution by up to a decade compared to current law and force residents of heavily-polluted areas to wait years longer for clean air compared to the existing Clean Air Act.”

Zachary Roth writing for the Columbia Journalism Review put it this way, “It’s not just that the Clear Skies reduction targets are “little different” from what would be achieved by simply enforcing the Clean Air Act. It’s that Clear Skies, despite its name, would actually lead to more pollution than the existing Clean Air Act, because current law calls for further reductions over time.

In other words, either Clear Skies or strict enforcement of the Clean Air Act would make the air cleaner than it is today. But enforcing current law will achieve greater reductions than would Clear Skies”.

According to Energy Central Ken Silverstien “In February, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had violated the Clean Air Act by refusing to make mercury reductions mandatory. Instead, the Bush administration had proposed a voluntary cap-and-trade system that it says would have reduced mercury emissions by 70 percent by 2018.”

Yet cap and trade means that those that can trade, create hot zones of mercury pollution that may exceed responsible mercury pollution standards.

The NRDC says that “Mercury can cause serious neurological and developmental damage, including birth defects, subtle losses of sensory or cognitive ability, and delays in developmental milestones such as walking and talking. Power plants are responsible for 34 percent of all mercury emissions, which settle into our waters, where they accumulate in fish. In 41 states, officials warn against eating fish from mercury-contaminated lakes and rivers.”

Are people really so busy that they can’t rally enough vocal opposition to this blatant attempt to court irresponsible industries? Are we so strapped financially that we can’t keep our air clean enough to avoid health problems?

If this is all about money why aren’t the taxpayers outraged at the expense of treating air pollution related illnesses and diseases. It has to be less expensive to prevent the pollution than it is to treat all of the health problems associated with dirty air. Yet, people remain focused on complaints about the high cost of electricity without realizing that they are going to have to pay more money for health problems than they would for prevention programs.

I just don’t get it. Can someone out there explain it to me?