By 1Sky blogger Nick Santos.
By now, most of you have probably heard the double dose of bad news coming out of the Senate (It seems like political bad news too frequently comes from there). Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has indefinitely delayed action on a climate bill and is still talking of scheduling floor time for Senator Rockefeller’s (D-WV) reprise of Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) Dirty Air Act.
There’s a lot of implications to both of those actions, and I’m now beyond frustrated with the Senate, so let’s step through why this extra delay from the Senate is absolutely dangerous for public health and welfare.
First, let’s address the delay of the climate bill. The Senate continues to show absolute cowardice in its unwilling to act, despite clear public support for the measures. Working on climate change issues has given me a healthy dose of reality regarding the Senate’s timelines and the frequent delay that’s involved. However, this delay has the potential to be more devastating than the others because, unless something changes, we’re looking at a minimum of three months of delay, but potentially 6-12 months in reality. This length of time is unacceptable to address one of the biggest issues of our time.
As if doing absolutely nothing was too good for the Senate, Senator Rockefeller is pushing for complete regression through his version of Senator Murkowski’s Dirty Air Act. Rockefeller’s bill seeks a 2-year delay on EPA action on climate change, and this idea is, plain and simple, terrible because it eliminates the most effective defender of the public interest on climate change. EPA’s mandate to address carbon dioxide emission comes from requirements in the Clean Air Act that the Supreme Court reaffirmed in a landmark 2007 case, Massachusetts v. EPA. The Clean Air Act has proven time and again, through action on acid rain, mercury, and smog-forming emissions, to be an effective and economically efficient defender of the public interest, health, and well-being (studies have shown the Clean Air Act’s benefits outweigh the costs by as much as 42 to 1).
The EPA’s public rule-making process is nearing completion with requirements for big polluters like coal power plants set to take effect in January 2011. In response to these upcoming science-based regulations, Senator Rockefeller is attempting a political counterattack to protect coal interests over public health.
Two more years of delay will do nothing more than pad the pockets of polluters at the expense of public health. Furthermore, any amount of delay would require additional time spent restarting rule-making and also have high potential for another congressionally sponsored delay. Two years of delay is indefinite delay, so we can’t afford to have our senators strike these Clean Air Act requirements, even temporarily.
And the impacts and costs of further delay remain staggering. We’ve seen what our oil dependence has done to the public and environmental welfare in the Gulf Coast. We also see what it does in funding petro-dictatorships around the world. Similar impacts to public health — increased costs for vital resources like water, more rapid spread of disease, increased temperature — are happening or likely to happen as a result of emissions we have difficulty seeing, but which remain just as immediate. Senators should be seizing the moment to support Clean Air Act’s mission to protect our health and environment, not destroying one of the most effective public protection laws in U.S. history. Senators have a choice now to either take the country backward by undoing 40 years of clean air policy, or move forward to protect public health by addressing climate change. Shame on any Senator who chooses utilities and polluters over consumer health and votes for Senator Rockefeller’s legislation.
Nick Santos is a former 1Sky policy fellow and now works with The Environmental Consumer in California. The author’s opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the 1Sky campaign.
