Should Illness and Death By Counted in the Cost of Pollution from Power Plants?
Here’s an article that shines another little ray of light on what’s happening in the Trump administration’s EPA. In this case, it’s an attack on the Obama-era Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS), where the EPA, at the time, found that it was “appropriate and necessary” to regulate mercury and hazardous air pollutants from power plants. Now, the agency has determined, predictably, that regulating hazardous air pollution from power plants is a) no longer “appropriate and necessary,” and that b) the whole process is simply too expensive.
EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler is promoting an entirely new approach to performing the cost-benefit analysis MATs, and has proposed a fresh and original way to look at the costs and benefits of MATs. His proposal removes the human costs from the equation. In other words, forget about:
• The fact that people are getting sick and dying from the mercury, fine particles, and sulfur dioxide in the emissions, and
• The health benefits, estimated to range from $37 billion to $90 billion, including the prevention of up to 11,000 premature deaths and more than 100,000 asthma and heart attacks
• The value in a decrease in 5,700 emergency room visits, and over 3 million days of restricted activity each year.
This is how absurd the discussion has become. Reducing the enormous amount of illness and death associated with power plants is no longer a worth while enterprise.
Craig,
While it’s important mining sites be as environmental as possible, it’s also important not to indulge in simplistic, emotive alarmist propaganda with a hidden political or ideological agenda.
The ambulance that takes you to hospital and saves your life, runs on fuel produced by the oil industry !
In fact, the ambulance/firetender/ emergency service vehicle is made of steel produced with coal, chock full of plastics and ceramics (oil), a road surfaced with bitumen (oil and coal), cement for bridges overpasses, exit ramps, event the hospital building(coal)medicines from oil, and more than 1,500,000 other products from the fossil fuel industry.
All our modern infrastructure, all the vast improvements in health and longevity is the result of oil, coal and mining.
Shouldn’t they also be part of your equation?
One of the biggest improvements in urban environments, saving the lives of millions of children each year has been the advent of the motor car which eliminated millions of cases of child horse encephalitis.
Naturally, no one is encouraging rampant pollution, but these endless little twee sermons, desperately trying to scapegoat “villains” to sure up losing political ideologies, is tedious.
Craig,
Here’s a link to Carine Sebi’s article in the PHYS ORG, ;
[ https://phys.org/news/2019-02-coal-consumption-worldwide.html%5D
Professor Carine Sebi is an influential leftist author writing originally in the ‘Conversation’ an influential left leaning academic publication.
Carine Sebi is a Professor of Energy Economics at Grenoble Ecole de Management.
Yet Professor Sebi’s article argues with compelling evidence the expansion of coal fired electricity generation occurring globally.
When even such stalwart opponents of Coal are beginning to recognize the obvious and lament the obvious failure of the “War on Coal”, the elephant in the room should become obvious to even the most ardent wearer of rose tinted glasses still babbling on about renewables and demanding fossil fuels be “kept in the ground”.
That was always a silly idea, a political and ideological delusion funded by taxpayer money and designed to weaken US and European economies.
The environmental cost of such delusions is always ignored by “leave it in the ground” advocates.
While you alternate between ineffectual hand wringing and delusional political outrage, the environment suffers from your selfishness.
The “war against Coal and Fossil Fuels”, is misdirected. If you must have a “war”, the war should be against harmful emissions, not the resource itself.
If all the energy and passion wasted on a failed and misconceived crusade had been redirected into promoting Clean(er) Coal technology, and cleaner fossil fuels, these technologies would be far further advanced.
The winner, would be the environment. This may not suit those whose political agenda is only using environmental aims to further a leftist agenda, but if reducing emissions is really the prime target, it shouldn’t matter if a result is achieved by means of new advanced technology reducing emissions, even if the political agenda is not achieved.
The target should be a cleaner, lower carbon future by the most effective and practical means for the whole planet, not fighting some bitter political localized squabble that is only counter-productive to reducing emissions.
Craig, I urge you to adopt the “bigger picture ” !
Return to basics. Embrace the real practical benefits of clean technology, even if it doesn’t fit your political/philosophic/ ideological agenda.