How EPA could destroy 7.3 million jobs

[lostinblue 1,989]

William F. Shughart II: How EPA could destroy 7.3 million jobs

Environmental Protection Agency officials Wednesday provided power companies and states with new guidance on EPA’s plans to regulate greenhouse gases.

A D.C. lobbyist for two major power companies told Bloomberg News that “the energy and manufacturing sectors will essentially be in a construction moratorium” as a consequence.

Here we are, with 15 million Americans unemployed and millions more underemployed, and the EPA is moving blindly ahead with new regulations that will increase dramatically the energy costs of U.S. industries, reducing their competitiveness and profitability, and making it less likely they will hire.

EPA’s action amounts to rewriting the Clean Air Act to suit its own bureaucratic and ideological objectives. At a time when the Obama administration should be focused on job creation and the nation’s economic recovery, promulgating stringent new environmental rules should be its last priority.

The new EPA rules call for a reduction in the national ambient air-quality standard for ground-level ozone, a precursor of smog, from 75 parts per billion to between 60 and 70 parts per billion, a cut of up to 20 percent.

While this might seem innocuous enough, setting a more-stringent ozone standard will in fact cause economic havoc.

Hundreds of U.S. cities and counties already don’t meet the current standard. If the EPA tightens the rules, these counties will fall permanently into noncompliance, even with costly investments in new pollution controls.

Under the Clean Air Act’s nondegradation provision, state and local governments are not permitted to take actions that would worsen air quality, even if the area is in compliance with EPA standards.

If a county or city is not in compliance, its economy won’t be able to grow — so the EPA’s proposal would spell economic stagnation for many communities.

A study by the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a 75-year old organization that provides economic research and training for business executives, warns that the new standard would destroy an estimated 7.3 million jobs nationwide and add $1 trillion annually in new regulatory costs beginning in 2020.

In Mississippi, the EPA proposal would kill an estimated 130,000 jobs and add $32.2 billion annually in new regulatory costs from 2020 to 2030.

Direct compliance costs are only part of the burden, however. If the new standards go into effect, the costs of nearly everything we buy also will go up, as higher energy prices raise production costs.

This huge price tag, however, wouldn’t appreciably improve public health. So it’s fair to ask why a more stringent ozone standard is even needed. Efforts to achieve cleaner air over the past 20 years have been extraordinarily successful, with pollution in some places cut in half.

If we’ve learned anything from clean-air regulation to date, it is that there is no low-cost way of substantially curtailing ground-level ozone or greenhouse-gas emissions within a relatively short time frame, which the EPA insists is necessary.

Fossil fuels account for 85 percent of America’s energy resources. We use oil, natural gas and coal — and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future — because they are plentiful and affordable.

All EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will accomplish is to impoverish America, while doing little to cut emissions globally.

Increased energy consumption in China and other developing economies will offset any reductions in the United States. It is an unwise and dangerous move that would compel us unilaterally to curtail our use of fossil fuels significantly, one consequence of which would be a decline in our country’s economic well-being.

The EPA’s proposed ozone standard exemplifies arbitrary over-regulation that will destroy jobs and harm our economy without any offsetting benefit.

Congress should block the EPA move.

William F. Shughart II is a senior fellow with the Independent Institute and F.A.P. Barnard distinguished professor of economics at the University of Mississippi.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/op-eds/2010/11/william-f-shughart-ii-how-epa-could-destroy-73-million-jobs#ixzz15wEOQoOc

[lostinblue 1,989]

Poverty rate highest in Mississippi

By Donna Melton | Biloxi Sun-Herald

BILOXI — Mississippi ranks highest in the nation for the number of people living in poverty.

The Census Bureau;s 2009 American Community Survey used data from 3 million households to put Mississippi at the top of the list, with 21.9 percent of state residents below the poverty level in 2009. That's up from 21.2 percent in 2008.

Similar trends can be seen in South Mississippi. Census data from both the Gulfport-Biloxi and Pascagoula metropolitan areas shows the percentage of people and families living in poverty also is on the rise.

Read the complete story at sunherald.com

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/29/101330/poverty-rate-highest-in-mississippi.html#ixzz15wGpFpR3

In Mississippi, the EPA proposal would kill an estimated 130,000 jobs and add $32.2 billion annually in new regulatory costs from 2020 to 2030.

United States has several pockets of persistently poor counties, two of which are the Lower Mississippi Delta and the Texas Borderland. In the Lower Mississippi Delta counties, over 35 percent of the inhabitants are African American; and in the Texas Borderland counties, over 66 percent of the inhabitants are Mexican American.

[Ban Hammer 13,669]

hope the lwn's like walking.

[Danno 1,228]

The EPA, is out of control and needs it's wings clipped. It currently has a whopping 18,000 employees. Think about that.

It has lost it's way and now they are searching for new reasons to exist.

As it does so it keeps expanding.

It could be well argued the EPA still has a vital roll to play, it just need to be redefined and scaled down.