In just about the last month, the Obama Administration has delayed new EPA regulations on ozone and greenhouse gas emissions, and the House of Representatives voted to delay more EPA regulations. Americans should cheer all three developments.
Why?
Because the decisions will save lives.
First an illustration—then the facts.
About a decade ago my medical exam revealed moderately elevated cholesterol and blood pressure. My doctor, not surprisingly, immediately and sternly advised medications for both. But I knew the medications had negative side effects, and I knew the risks from my moderately high cholesterol and blood pressure were fairly small. How to balance the side effects and the risks, I didn’t know.
So I emailed my numbers to three physician friends and asked, “If these were your numbers, what would you do?” All three gave the same answer, but one illustrated it creatively.
“I could reduce the risk of incursions of Virginia white-tailed deer into my city yard, where they could eat up my rare plants, by better than 38% by erecting a nine-foot high fence around the yard,” he said. “I have not done so and do not plan to do so, since the absolute risk of a deer entering my downtown property is very small. A 38% reduction of a very small risk, is a very small absolute reduction.”
All three said they’d take no medications if they had my numbers, though they might increase their exercise and make some minor changes in diet. I took no medications, increased my exercise a bit, and made no changes in diet. A decade later, my numbers are lower. We all want to keep risks to a minimum, but sometimes reducing one risk involves increasing another.
Such considerations explain why many people, like me, are concerned about the raft of new regulations being proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. All of them will impose compliance costs in both reduced freedom and reduced income per capita. And those, in turn, spell reduced health and life expectancy for the American people.
For example, one proposed new rule would force reductions of mercury emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants by about 83 percent—from about 29 to about 5 tons per year. Credible estimates of the cost to achieve that range from the EPA’s low of about $10 billion to a high of $100 billion—or, at one death per $15 million in regulatory costs, a low of about 675 to a high of about 6,667 excess deaths—to achieve the EPA’s stated goal. Yet the EPA itself says that even larger reductions would be “unlikely to substantially affect total risk.”
But that’s just one rule. There are others, forcing reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, coal ash, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, ozone, and airborne particulates—and those are just the ones targeting the electric utility industry. Their costs will add up to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, with each $100 billion causing an added 6,667 deaths (more than twice those killed on 9/11).
EPA has other parts of our economy in its crosshairs, too. For example, a new “guidance document” instructing EPA employees how to interpret the Clean Water Act (in ways contrary to two Supreme Court rulings and Congressional intent, but flying under the radar by avoiding EPA’s formal rule-making process) will force farmers to get CWA permits before using pesticides, though pesticide use is already governed by FIFRA (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act). As Missouri farmer Blake Hurst points out, EPA estimates the new rule will require filing 5.6 million permits each year, at an administrative cost to the EPA of about $50 million (3.3 deaths)—and that doesn’t include the roughly 1 million hours of farmers’ time each year required to file the permits. (Calculated at $25 per hour, that’s another 1.7 deaths. A death here, a death there—pretty soon we’re talking about real people.)
That’s not the only way new EPA regs will hit farmers. Tighter particulate matter rules would require farmers to reduce the amount of dust they stir up. “Dust is sort of natural to farming,” Hurst says, “up to and including the dust from the gravel and dirt roads that are the only ways to access most farms, including my own. When we harvest, we leave great plumes of soybean dust in our wake, making harvest-time the season for the Midwest’s most beautiful sunsets. The EPA has recommended that we harvest our crops before they are, well, dry as dust. This means we’ll have to spend more time and money on drying grain, causing us to use more energy, which will increase greenhouse gases, which the EPA is working on as well. Not only that, but grain harvested at high moisture is much more likely to grow mold”—which causes its own health risks.
As in energy generation, so in agriculture: more regulations mean higher costs. Those costs will always be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices—not just for food and energy but for everything else, since workers require food and machines require energy. And the people hardest hit will be the poor, the elderly, and others with low or fixed incomes. All the rest of these new regulations should be delayed or killed, too. The result would be savings, not just of money but, more importantly, life and liberty.
Photo Credit: Mateusz Stachowski/freeimages.com
