Deoncstructing America - and the world

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed a major change in the way the federal government calculates the costs and benefits of dangerous air pollutants, arguing that authorities should exclude some of the public health benefits stemming from new rules.

The proposal, which revisits a 2011 rule limiting mercury emissions from coal plants, argues EPA lacked justification to curb the neurotoxin in the first place because many benefits stemmed from the overall drop in air pollution that would occur once power companies adopted new technologies. The EPA is not reversing the Obama-era standards — with which the industry has already complied — the agency wants to alter the underlying calculations to set a precedent for future public health rules.

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If adopted, the change would prevent regulators from calculating positive health effects — known as “co-benefits” — that come from reducing pollutants other than those being targeted.

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Coal-fired power plants rank as the nation’s single biggest emitter of mercury. Over time, emissions of the pollutant also build up in fish, whose elevated levels of mercury are absorbed by people who eat them.

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Under President Barack Obama, the EPA estimated that it would cost utilities $9.6 billion a year to comply with the new standards, while limiting mercury would translate into merely $6 million in public health benefits. But the EPA estimated at the time that other factors, such as reductions in soot and nitrogen oxide that would accompany cuts to mercury pollution, would save between $37 billion to $90 billion in annual health costs and lost workdays by preventing as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks.

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“There is no legitimate justification for this action,” Harold P. Wimmer, chief executive of the American Lung Association, said in a statement, adding that the regulation had been effective not just in limiting mercury, but also emissions of carcinogens such as arsenic, chromium and nickel, as well as toxic acid gases that form particle pollution, which causes asthma attacks, heart attacks and premature death. “EPA’s proposal to undermine the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards is one of its most dangerous efforts yet.”

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“I just think it’s a little fuzzy math when you say, ‘Reduce mercury and we have all these other benefits over here,’ as the shiny object,” EPA acting administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview with The Washington Post this fall.

  WaPo

Moron.

EPA issued the proposal just hours before the agency is slated to shut down, at midnight, due to the ongoing budget impasse between President Trump and congressional leaders.

Here's your reminder that it's a conscious decision to let it all burn because "the planet's fate is already sealed." 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.  There's wealth to be had before the planet dies.