When the Trump administration last week finalized a rule that could make it more difficult to enact public health protections by changing the way the EPA calculates costs and benefits of new limits on air pollution, the rule makers didn’t take into account Chattanooga’s example of how such costs and benefits play out.
Or, seeing as it is the Trump administration, they just didn’t care.
The new cost-benefit requirements, which apply to all future Clean Air Act rules, instruct the Environmental Protection Agency to weigh all the economic costs of curbing an air pollutant, but disregard many of the incidental benefits that arise. “Incidental” benefits such as avoided illnesses and deaths.
In short, if reducing emissions from power plants or foundries also saves tens of thousands of lives each year by cutting soot, those “co-benefits” should be not be counted.
“This is all about transparency and conducting our work in a transparent fashion,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Wednesday as he announced the finalized rule during a webinar at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. “Our goal with this rule is to help the public better understand the why of a rulemaking, in addition to the what.” The agency’s past approach “has meant inconsistent rules and a disoriented private sector,” he added.