Tom's Turn: Notes from our Senior Editor

Air regulations work. Imagine that.

October 15, 2003

In the canon of Bush the younger, environmental regulations are a drag on the economy, and public health should be entrusted to the good citizenship of various polluting industries. It is not news to readers of this newsletter -- to readers of every newspaper in the land, for that matter -- that this administration has set out to weaken, water down, eviscerate, or repeal countless regulations adopted to protect air, water, wildlife, wilderness, and all other resources you can think of.

But now, in an amazing irony, the administration's own Office of Management and Budget has released the results of the most extensive survey of the costs and benefits of 107 different regulations ever conducted. As a general proposition, the study found that the benefits of investing in pollution-control equipment far outweigh their costs.

A few details: The study examined costs and benefits of the rules over a full decade, from October 1, 1992, through September 30, 2002. The rules examined were issued by the departments of agriculture, education, energy, health and human services, housing and urban development, labor, transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

In aggregate, the estimated benefits of all the rules fell between $146 billion and $231 billion, with costs estimated to fall between $36.6 billion and $43 billion. The Environmental Protection Agency accounted for most of the benefits, measured in reductions in hospitalization and emergency room visits, premature deaths, and lost workdays. And four air pollution rules -- two that limit particulate matter and nitrogen oxide emissions from heavy trucks, other regulations on light-duty vehicles, and a rule that reduces emissions that lead to acid rain -- were the biggest producers. These four rules had estimated benefits of between $101 billion and $119 billion at a cost of a paltry $8 billion to $8.8 billion.

The most surprising thing about all this is that the White House didn't deep-six the study. The New York Times commented, "Whether these findings will alter the administration's suspicion of federal regulation is unclear. President Bush has rarely allowed science (or, for that matter, logic) to interfere with his policies -- witness his attempts to suppress or ignore alarming evidence about global warming to justify his cost-free strategy... Fundamental policy shifts are probably not in the cards."

One important sidebar to this story: Many EPA regulations mandated by Congress were only issued after Earthjustice and other organizations filed lawsuits against the agency to force it to act. Thus, your investment in Earthjustice resulted in the government's forcing significant investments in pollution control equipment and strategies and it has paid huge dividends. We can all take pride in the results.

The OMB study -- all 234 pages -- is available here.

Tom Turner, Senior Editor
yourturn@earthjustice.org