Posted on 05/13/2014 3:16:44 AM PDT by lowbridge
As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) moves forward with more stringent ozone regulations, it could be the costliest EPA regulation in history. Senator John Thune (R–SD) wants to make sure that doesn’t happen.
In 2011, President Obama asked then-EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the agency’s draft for more stringent National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Although Jackson begrudgingly complied, the EPA moved forward to implement the Bush Administration’s 2008 proposed standards of 75 parts per billion (ppb) of ozone, down from 84 ppb. A ppb is the concentration of ozone in the air over an eight-hour period; for reference, a drop of gasoline in a tanker truck is 1 ppb.
The massive costs of tightening the standard have outweighed the negligible environmental benefits in the past, and enforcing the 75-ppb standard will have diminishing marginal returns—quite possibly to a vanishing point. Even the EPA acknowledged that lowering the ozone standard to 70 ppb would lower asthma and respiratory diseases by only a few tenths of a percent.
But the costs? Many companies would have to implement costly emission-reduction technologies, and a tighter standard could prevent them from expanding and operating. Further, areas of non-attainment of the ozone standard have difficulty attracting businesses.
If the EPA were to implement a 60-ppb standard, the total U.S. attainment costs between 2020 and 2030 would be over $1 trillion—per year. Economist Donald Norman projects that would lead to 7.3 million jobs lost by 2020.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.heritage.org ...
Perhaps it would be much easier to eliminate the EPA instead of lowering the emission standard.
Ozone concentrations in rural areas can be higher than in urban areas
http://www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=12462
And, in rural areas, we find plant life and lots of it. Which the cite above claims is a contributor to ozone levels. “Woody vegetation is another major source of VOCs.”
I grow enough plants to know that plants run on carbon dioxide. So I have to ask, is carbon monoxide, from say, cars, or BLM-mismanaged wildfires, not changed to carbon dioxide by one of the three oxygen atoms in “terrestial” ozone? So what’s all this fuss about an abundance of oxygen? I thought it was all the soot and such that was the culprit for plant damage, and damage to health, not oxygen. So what am I not seeing?
I’m confused. I thought ozone destruction was a bad thing.
Looks like Thune running in 2016?
Maybe we should use more hairspray.
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