The Twilight Ozone The Grand Canyon may soon be an EPA ‘non-attainment’ area.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-twilight-ozone-1443742001
The economic punishment from President Obama’s green agenda continued Tuesday as the Environmental Protection Agency issued a new regulation on ozone, among the most costly in U.S. history.
The final rule is wholly discretionary, and none other than President Obama overruled the EPA on ozone in 2011 in the name of “reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty.” But that was headed into an election year, and Mr. Obama is making amends to burnish his eco-legacy.
Ozone in the ambient air can contribute to smog and respiratory ailments, but the U.S. has worked hard to control O3 to the point of virtual nonexistence. “Back in 1979, Los Angeles still was so full of smog that there were days where people who were vulnerable just could not go outside,” Mr. Obama said in August. “And you fast-forward 30, 40 years later, and we solved those problems.”
Sure enough, the EPA’s latest measures show most of the U.S. is meeting the 2008 standards of ozone concentrations of 75 parts per billion (ppb) or less, except for pockets in Texas and the northeast. Only green-happy California is in “extreme non-attainment.”
The EPA is nonetheless lowering the standard to 70 ppb and the green lobby wanted 65 ppb or even 60 ppb. So while avoiding the worst-case scenario, the factories, utilities, refineries, farms, cars and trucks that produce the man-made emissions that cause ozone to form will need to install expensive retrofits. New ones will be more expensive. The EPA estimated the 2011 draft proposal would cost the private economy anywhere from $19 billion to $90 billion.
All that money will buy few public health benefits. The EPA is attempting to drive ozone down to or below the “background” level where it naturally occurs from sources like forest fires and plant life. The Grand Canyon and Yellowstone will likely become “non-attainment areas” under the new standard.
Mr. Obama and the EPA invoke asthma attacks, and cleaning up dirty air in a city like Beijing would certainly help asthmatics—and everybody else. But the marginal gains decline sharply when moving from clean U.S. air to allegedly cleaner air.
To repeat for the benefit of the children, costly regulations like the ozone rule make it harder for the economy to expand. Dollars that a manufacturer spends to replace functional equipment can’t be spent to hire new workers or finance a new idea. California gets a special dispensation and more time to comply because the EPA deems its ozone problem is “uniquely stubborn,” but the state is also losing factories and businesses that will take the hit. Federal permits are much harder to obtain in “non-attainment areas.”
If you want to know why the U.S. has had 2% growth for so long, the EPA’s almost bimonthly release of regulations like the ozone rule—or the coal ash rule, the mercury rule, or the waters of the United States rule—is a big part of the explanation.
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