Some of you may be familiar with the
Precautionary Principle, well established in Europe and Canada, and slowly
gaining traction here in the US. This spring I wrote a brief
introduction to the Precautionary Principle for the online newsletter of
Commonweal Institute, for which I am a volunteer research/writer. The brief is attached (25 KB) for those
interested in the references embedded in it.
As a follow-up, let me add that the
Superfund is broke, due largely to the fact that Bush2 has removed the imposed
fees on the petro industry that funded most of the superfund projects. Cleanups across the country are not
just stranded but, as with the City and Port of Portland, finding it difficult
to attract new business to a declared environmental disaster but without the
means (or polluting culprits) to fund the clean up. One of the best features of PP, in my
opinion, is building assurance bonds into projects from the beginning, much as
large construction projects are required to do, to make the initiators
responsible in the future if something goes wrong, not the taxpayers. As below, it is not just better to be
safe than sorry, it is also cost-effective. -
KWC
Study
Finds Net Gain From Pollution Rules
OMB
Overturns Past Findings on Benefits
By Eric
Pianin, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, September 27, 2003; Page A01 @
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7586-2003Sep26.html
A
new White House study concludes that environmental regulations are well worth
the costs they impose on industry and consumers, resulting in significant
public health improvements and other benefits to society. The findings
overturn a previous report that officials now say was
defective.
The
report, issued this month by the Office of Management and Budget, concludes
that the health and social benefits of enforcing tough new clean-air
regulations during the past decade were five
to seven times greater in economic terms than were the costs of complying with
the rules.
The value of reductions in hospitalization and emergency room visits,
premature deaths and lost workdays resulting from improved air quality were
estimated
between $120 billion and $193 billion
from October 1992 to September 2002.
By
comparison, industry, states and municipalities spent an estimated
$23
billion to $26 billion
to
retrofit plants and facilities
and make other changes to comply with new clean-air standards, which are
designed to sharply reduce sulfur dioxide, fine-particle emissions and other
health-threatening pollutants.
The
report provides the most comprehensive federal study ever of the cost and
benefits of regulatory decision-making. It has pleasantly surprised some
environmentalists who doubted the Bush administration would champion the
benefits of government regulations, and fueled arguments that the White House
should continue pushing clean-air standards rather than trying to weaken
some. "I'm sure the true
believers in the Bush administration will brand this report as true heresy
because it defies the stereotype of burdensome, worthless regulations," Sen.
Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said yesterday. "They clearly don't understand that
the government regulations are there to protect you -- and they
work."
John
D. Graham, director of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs,
which produced the study, said: "Our role at OMB is to report the best
available estimates of benefits and costs, regardless of whether the
information favors one advocacy group or another. In this case the data show
that the Environmental Protection Agency's clean-air office has issued some
highly beneficial rules." But an
industry official said the report may have greatly understated the costs
associated with environmental regulations. Jeffrey Marks, a clean-air policy
expert with the National Association of Manufacturers, said EPA "has
traditionally underestimated the costs of regulations on industry. . . . The
tendency to choose benefit numbers to correspond to favorable policy choices
is strong within the agency."
The
findings are more startling because a similar OMB report last year concluded
that the cost of compliance with a given set of regulations was roughly
comparable to the public benefits. OMB now says it had erred
last year by vastly understating the benefits of EPA's
rules
establishing national ambient air quality standards for ozone and for
particulate matter -- a
major factor in upper respiratory, heart and lung
disorders.
Also, last year's report covered the previous six years and did not account
for the beneficial effects of the 1990
amendments to the Clean Air Act that sharply reduced the problem of acid
rain.
…"The
bottom line
is that the benefits from major environmental rules over the past
10
years
were [five to seven] times greater than the costs," said Kevin Curtis of the
National Environmental Trust. "And that's a number that can't be ignored, even
by an administration that has blamed 'excessive' environmental regulations for
everything from the California energy crisis to last month's blackout to job
losses to the failing economy."
(end
of excerpts)