Environmental Pollution Agency?
'Rule change' throws money at dirty utilities
By John Catalinotto
The Bush administration is using the Aug. 14
power outage in the Northeast as an excuse to eviscerate the
Clean Air Act and allow major utility monopolies to grow even
richer as they add to air pollution.
It is a gross understatement to describe the Bush gang as
simply pro-business. The Bush government takes undemocratic
steps to raise the immediate profits of a narrow grouping of
giant companies while despoiling the environment, eliminating
jobs and causing long-term damage to the population. Then Bush
spokespeople use the flimsiest lies to cover up this grand
larceny.
The latest example of this was a change made on Aug. 27 to
the rules enforcing the Clean Air Act. Before that date,
utility companies making major changes to upgrade old power
plants had to also install modern air-pollution controls, such
as new scrubbers in their smokestacks. Now, under the new rule,
air-pollution controls are not required as long as the changes
affect less than 20 percent of the plant's value.
This is a significant change in the entire intention of the
Clean Air Act, but it was not even presented to Congress as an
amendment. This giveaway to the owners of major utilities was
made possible by executive edict, through a rule change in the
Environmental Protection Agency, which has been taken over by
the environmental plunderers.
The change immediately provoked a protest from environmental
groups, political opponents, and even many state governments.
Already Pennsylvania, Massa chu setts, New York, New Jersey,
Maine and California have either joined a suit against the EPA
over this rule change or made plans to join it.
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, feeling the heat
in a state with a strong environmental movement, said, "This is
the latest evidence of what has become standard operating
procedure for the Bush administration. Roll back safeguards for
the environment, sabotage states' authority to enforce air- and
water-quality laws and undermine California's efforts to
protect the health of its citizens. We cannot afford to let
them succeed."
The Bush administration tried to blame the anti-pollution
rules for the Aug. 14 power outage, saying they discouraged
production. But the outage was caused by problems with
transmission of electricity, not its production. Just like the
justification given for the war on Iraq, this justification for
polluting the air was nothing but a big lie.
If the government were to seriously intervene to encourage
the development of industry friendly to the environment, it
would create many new jobs. Just consider how the $4 billion
spent monthly in the effort to subjugate Iraq could instead be
used to subsidize industries researching and manufacturing
devices to protect the environment. Hundreds of thousands of
young people who today face a choice of unemployment or the
military could find constructive work here at home defending
this country from the ravages of capitalist greed.
Reprinted from the Sept. 11, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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