[Vision2020] The Job-Creating Mercury Rule

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>


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February 22, 2012
The Job-Creating Mercury Rule

After 20 years of delay and litigation by polluters, the Obama
administration approved in December one of the most important rules in the
history of the Clean Air Act. It will require power plants to reduce
emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants by more than 90 percent in
the next five years and is expected to prevent as many as 11,000 premature
deaths annually from asthma, other respiratory diseases and heart attacks.

The technology to control the pollutants is readily available. The health
benefits far outweigh the costs to the power companies. That isn’t
stopping Senator
James Inhofe <http://inhofe.senate.gov/public/> of Oklahoma, one of the
most persistent critics of the clean air laws. The moment the rule was
published in the Federal Register last week, he filed a resolution of
disapproval<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-government/house-and-senate-gop-seek-to-overrule-regulations-on-power-plant-pollution-union-elections/2012/02/16/gIQAAs30HR_story.html>under
the 1996 Congressional Review Act.

The tactic, which has been used successfully only once, allows a simple
majority in the Senate and House to nullify a federal regulation, forcing
the executive branch to start from scratch the laborious, multiyear process
of writing a new one. Mr. Inhofe must know he is unlikely to win. His goal
appears to be to force Democrats to vote to support what he calls Mr.
Obama’s “job-killing” environmental agenda — following on the Republicans’
relentless denunciation of the president’s sound decision to shelve the
Keystone XL oil pipeline and his steady support for clean-energy
investments. Yet no matter what the Republican leadership claims, the
clean-energy sector is a much more likely source of future job growth than
the fossil-fuel industries they are so determined to protect. And the new
clean air rules Mr. Inhofe so abhors are likely to create far more jobs
than they eliminate.

It is true that the mercury rule, and other clean air regulations, will
require substantial upgrades in older, coal-burning power plants and force
others to close down. The power companies have had years to prepare. In
addition to reducing emissions of global warming gases and ground-level
pollutants, the upgrades are expected to create as many as 45,000 temporary
construction jobs over the next five years and possibly 8,000 permanent
jobs.

We don’t expect such logic to change Mr. Inhofe’s mind or the Republicans’
political strategy. President Obama has a strong case to make for these
environmental rules and for the clean energy jobs that come with them. He
needs to keep making it.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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