Is there nothing that Obama can’t do? Amid rejoicing at the NYT;
The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed stricter health standards for smog, replacing a Bush-era limit that ran counter to scientific recommendations.
The new limits — which are presented as a range — will likely put hundreds more counties nationwide in violation, a designation that will require them to find additional ways to clamp down on pollution or face government sanctions, most likely the loss of federal highway dollars.
The tighter standards will cost tens of billions of dollars to implement, but will ultimately save billions in avoided emergency room visits, premature deaths, and missed work and school days, the EPA said.
[…]
While smog has been a long-term problem in parts of Texas, California, and along the northeast Coast, the new standards could affect counties in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, the Dakotas, Kansas, Minnesota and Iowa for the first time based on EPA data.
Yes, those Dakotas.
@5:54 PM
If people were true environmentalists rather than greedy hypocrites (hi, Al Gore), reducing smog and cleaning up lakes would be their top priorities, not enforcing ridiculous “green” policies.
Just my thoughts.
Posted by: Osumashi Kinyobe at January 7, 2010 5:54 PM
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Good Clear thinking Mr. Kinyobe
Also, I read reliable research that states ” Smog kills twice as many humans than automobiles do.”
Not to mention soaring public health costs.
Ever so Slowly the public focus shifts from silly global warming bullshit to the real problem, pollution…er, poisonous industrial chemical contamination.
Fortunately we are doing something..
Bylaws restricting toxic lawn and garden chemicals and a move to electric cars.
Sequestering coal effluent and more.
What else is being improved? re-cycling..?
Posted by: The Phantom at January 7, 2010 7:37 PM
The CPC is not an alternative for people who want smaller government, lower taxes, and less regulation.
That’s the point. Partisans can’t get past that.
I can see it now: a professional soccer franchise: The Dakota Smog…
Nice Picture, made me laugh when it loaded! My spider found your post about your common sense approach to cleaning up the air and water and THEN the carbon & global warming will be affected! Too true. I see large corporations running pollution out of the back door, into OUR air and water but I think cap and trade will limit how much carbon they are able to excrete and will lower it over several years. My concern with cap and trade is that once this watered down bill is passed…it will not be buffed up and actually put into use. Look at Clean Water Act, enacted in 1974. NPDES permits (legal permits to pollute directly into streams) is supposedly against the law? Interesting world we live in, thank you for being in it with your views.
Abigail Frost
Save Maumee Grassroots Org. Founder
Master Naturalist
Watershed Expert
“Abe Froman at January 7, 2010 12:52 PM . . .”
. . . and others who agree with Ibsen that Americans, like most peoples, have whatever form of government they deserve:
America is still a centrist nation. UF, politicians and crusaders never are, thus the Republicans, drunk on power and feeling it was their moment, cast caution to the wind and embarked our country on a ruinously expensive war with no clear goals and no exit strategy, in direct contradiction of the Powell-Weinberger doctrine – a product of a Republican administration.
Mostly out of disgust with this and other BushCo blunders, America elected a “change” candidate who seemed idealistc and mostly uncorrupted by Washington politics as ususal, and handed the Dems a decisive majority in both houses – the first since the The New Deal era.
There is a silver lining in all this: The Dems will have no opposition party to blame when things go south, as things will, because Dems can’t resist social engineering, busy-body government, and other rapid-backfire enthusiasms.
I would not be a bit surprised if Obi-Wan were a one-term president – centrist America will quickly tire of his nanny-government approach and its predictably stagnant economy. Although we’ve been moving that way for decades now, I don’t believe the USA is quite ready for European-style Socialsim yet – we still have a little of our Yankee grit & cussedness left.
The question is: Will the Republicans learn from their recent mistakes and behave a little more deliberately next time? Obi-Wan as a 1-term president would be ideal – the Republicans will still be smarting from the whipping they took in ’08.
Here’s to 2012!