EPA: A Few Billion Later, No Health Problems!!

This should inspire more than a few lawsuits. CATR was released today.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday finalized stronger regulations for Wisconsin and 26 other states aimed at curbing air pollution from long-distance sources.

...A group of power companies known as the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity called the action one of the most costly crackdowns on coal ever.

Nationwide, the EPA estimated utilities will spend $1.2 billion next year and $800 million in 2014 to comply with the rule.

Their estimate is not likely to be accurate--and as you'll see below, the number has changed in only the last few months.

But that's nothing; they made up the following BS from whole cloth:

...EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson extolled the health benefits of cleaner air, including $120 billion to $280 billion in annual health and welfare benefits beginning in 2014.

EPA's analysis found the rule will save up to 34,000 lives a year and prevent more than 400,000 asthma attacks as well as 19,000 admissions to hospitals.

(How did they come to that figure? Well, Lisa found an old, used hockey stick in the trash at AlGore's place, and........)

More on the topic of the "benefits":

the claimed purpose of the CATR is to reduce the interstate transport of air emissions from Midwest power plants that the EPA claims cause or contribute to air quality problems downwind in 32 Eastern States. [EPA] claims that the costs will be $4Bn in 2012 and another $3Bn in 2014 [note that EPA's news release above has much smaller figures].

Among the 32 Midwest and Eastern states that would be covered by the CATR, the daily air quaality standard for fine particulate matter (i.e., soot) w2as violated less than one-tenth of a percent of the time (0.096%) in 2009.

According to the most recent data for ground-level ozone (i.e., smog), the 8-hour ozone standard was violated only 1.3 percent of the time in the 32 CATR states.

There is no tangible scientific evidence that current air quality standards are not already more than sufficiently protective of public health. Data has been hidden from the public by the agency and by a clique of EPA-funded researchers. The EPA's scientific research has not been systematic or comprehensive despite the availability of data to the agency. Purported links between exposures to particulate matter and ground-level ozone, and health effects range from
the entirely hypothetical to the subclinical (i.e., temporary changes that are physiologically detectable but not otherwise meaningful. --Malloy

(And you thought I was kidding about the hockey stick, eh?)

Lawsuit would be fine. Eliminating EPA altogether would be ideal.