Job-Killing Environmentalists

President Barack Obama seems more concerned with appeasing environmental extremists in his administration than he is with the lost jobs of Americans, says Jon Basil Utley, associate publisher of the American Conservative.

Below are three areas where the environmental extremists hope to wreak havoc on the American economy:

Carbon Dioxide.

Human activity accounts for less than 4 per cent of global CO2 emissions and CO2 itself accounts for only 10 per cent or 20 per cent of the greenhouse effect.

Water vapour accounts for most of the other 80 per cent.

The Christian Science Monitor recently published an analysis of how the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) plans for reducing carbon dioxide could cause the loss of over a million jobs and raise every family's energy costs by over $1,200.

Factory Boilers.

The EPA wants new, more stringent limits on soot emissions from industrial and factory boilers.

This would cost $9.5 billion according to the EPA, or over $20 billion according to the American Chemistry Council.

A study released by the Council of Industrial Boiler Owners says the new rules would put 300,000 to 800,000 jobs at risk as industries opted to close plants rather than pay the expensive new costs.

Ground Level Ozone.

The EPA has asked the U.S. government to enact new smog regulations for ground-level ozone that will cut levels to .006 to .007 parts per million – this comes less than two years after standards were set at .0075 particles of pollutants per one million.

The New York Times reports that the agency quotes the price tag of such a change at between $19 billion and $100 billion per year by 2020.

It's time for Congress to investigate what the EPA and its reckless agenda is costing American workers, businesses and taxpayers, says Utley.

Source: Jon Basil Utley, Job-Killing Environmentalists, Reason Magazine, November 10, 2010.

For text: http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/10/job-killing-environmentalists

For more on Environment Issues: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=31

First published by the National Center for Policy Analysis, United States

FMF Policy Bulletin/ 16 November 2010