It was not hard recently for the Environmental Protection Agency to propose new anti-smog rules. But it will be hard for Americans to pay the higher energy costs that the rules create.
It is acknowledged with certainty that the new regulations will cost tens of billions of dollars. It is predicted (or guessed) with far less certainty that billions of dollars in medical costs will be saved by reducing pollution, offsetting the expense of complying with the regulations.
But the EPA does not have to worry whether its predictions, or guesses, are correct, because the EPA does not have to provide the money to pay for its mandates. That money will come from others, including homes and businesses saddled with higher power bills.
Some will be able to afford that increase without much trouble. Others — low-income Americans or the elderly living on fixed incomes — will not, and they will find it harder to heat their homes in frigid winters or cool them in blistering summers. Did the EPA take that danger into account when it was calculating “savings” from further restricting emissions that help create smog?
What exactly does the EPA propose? Well, under the Bush administration, the highest permissible amount of ground-level ozone — the key component in smog — was 75 parts per billion. The EPA now says the maximum should be 70 parts per billion. The Associated Press noted that 70 parts per billion would equal one tennis ball in an Olympic-size swimming pool brimming with tennis balls. That doesn’t seem to be much of a difference.
Clean air is certainly important, and companies that produce energy from coal, for instance, do put out objectionable emissions — though the plants are vastly cleaner than they were in the past. But we do not live in an ideal world. There are dangers and unintended negative effects not only from those emissions but from handcuffing energy production to the extent that it’s hard for some American homes and businesses to “keep the lights on.”
We desire cleaner air, but we have to meet our nation’s energy needs. It’s unfortunate that that balance is missing from the debate.