[Vision2020] A Bad Call on Ozone

[Art Deco]

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September 2, 2011
A Bad Call on Ozone
President Obama's decision not to proceed with stronger air-quality standards governing ozone is a setback for public health and the environment and a victory for industry and its Republican friends in Congress. 

In a terse, three-paragraph statement Friday morning, the president said he did not want to burden industry with new rules at a time of great economic uncertainty, and he pledged to revisit the issue in two years. But since the proposed rules would not have begun to bite for several years, his decision seemed driven more than anything else by politics and his own re-election campaign. 

Ozone is the main component of smog, a leading cause of respiratory and other diseases. The standards governing allowable ozone levels of ozone in communities across the country have not changed since 1997. In 2008, the Bush administration proposed a new standard that was a good deal weaker than the recommendations of the E.P.A.'s science advisers and were promptly challenged in courts by state governments and environmental groups. 

This summer, Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, sent a new and stronger standard to the White House - igniting a fierce lobbying campaign by industry groups asserting that the standards would require impossibly costly investments in new pollution controls and throw people out of work. Industry has made these arguments before. They almost always turn out to be exaggerated. 

The president sought to assuage Ms. Jackson by reminding her that a host of other environmental rules approved or in the works - including mandating cleaner cars and fewer power plant emissions of mercury and other pollutants - would do much to clean the air. All true. But there is still no excuse for compromising on public health and allowing politics to trump science. 

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Wayne A. Fox
wayne.a.fox at gmail.com
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