Obama gives in to pro-smog lobby

This video from the USA is called Protecting the Clean Air Act.

From the New York Times in the USA:

Washington — The Obama administration is abandoning its plan to immediately tighten air-quality rules nationwide to reduce emissions of smog-causing chemicals after an intense lobbying campaign by industry, which said the new rule would cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs, officials said Friday.

By Joseph Kishore in the USA:

Obama cancels smog regulation opposed by big business

3 September 2011

The Obama administration on Friday rejected a proposal from its own Environmental Protection Agency to tighten air standards for smog. The regulations, which scientists project would prevent thousands of premature deaths and health problems, were intensely opposed by energy corporations.

Obama’s decision is part of a campaign by the administration to remove restraints on corporate profits, using the jobs crisis in the United States as a pretext.

The EPA regulations would have revised standards set by the Bush administration for ground-level ozone, or smog. The EPA proposal was in line with the unanimous opinion of its panel of scientific advisers and followed statements from Obama in 2010 indicating support for tightening the standards.

The proposal was itself very conservative, phasing in a reduction of ground-level ozone over a period of two decades. Areas with heavy smog levels would have even more time to comply.

In rejecting the standards, Obama made clear that his principle consideration was the profit interests of the energy corporations. “I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover,” he said in a statement.

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s administrator of regulatory affairs, explained in a letter to EPA head Lisa Jackson that the president was pursuing deregulation throughout the government in order “to minimize regulatory costs and burdens… The president has instructed me to give careful scrutiny to all regulations that impose significant costs on the private sector…”

The standards would have required factories and energy corporations to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides and other chemicals that contribute to the formation of smog. At the same time, the EPA has estimated that the new regulations would reduce health care costs by as much as $100 billion.

According to the Clean Air Act, which covers the regulation of pollutants, the EPA is forbidden from considering costs as a factor in determining air quality standards. For this reason, the administration claimed that its decision to reject the new standards was based on the fact that there is ongoing scientific research, justifying a delay of new standards until 2013.

This is “a real dodge,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, in a phone interview. “Nobody, including the administration, is going to suggest that there is going to be new science tomorrow to say that these pollutants are not a danger to human health. It is a poor smokescreen for what is really going on. Obama is responding to industry pressure to the harm of the American public.”

A statement released by the CBD noted, “The National Association of Clean Air Agencies says that EPA’s own data shows that today’s delay will result in more than 8,500 premature deaths, more than 45,000 cases of aggravated asthma, at least 1.5 million missed work or school days, and more than 5 million cases where citizens will need to restrict their activities.”

The American Lung Association issued a statement Friday calling the decision “outrageous.”

So Letting Businesses Pollute the Air and Water Is How the Administration Believes We’ll Create Jobs? Here.

US Awash in Oil and Lies, Report Charges. Stephen Leahy, Inter Press Service: “The country’s oil industry is primarily interested in who will pay the most on the global marketplace. They call that ‘energy security’ when it suits, but in reality it is ‘oil company security’ through maximising profits, say energy experts like Steve Kretzman of Oil Change International, an NGO that researches the links between oil, gas and coal companies and governments”: here.