Posted by JM Ashby
The Environmental Protection Agency, and more specifically, the Clean Air Act, was one of the first targets to be chosen for the Republican's first round of reckless budget cutting. And why is that? Republicans will tell you that it's simply too costly to enforce and that jobs are lost because of it.
Unfortunately for them, the EPA has just released a report touting both the health benefits of the Clean Air Act and the economic benefits. The numbers are pretty staggering too.
Cutting ozone pollution using the Clean Air Act will have saved $2 trillion by 2020 and prevented at least 230,000 deaths annually, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a report.
Tougher emission restrictions adopted in 1990 helped avoid more than 160,000 premature deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, 13 million lost work days and 1.7 million asthma attacks last year, according to today’s report, which measured only the impact of amendments from 1990. By 2020, complying with the amendments would prevent 200,000 heart attacks, 17 million lost work days and 2.4 million asthma attacks, according to the report.
The budget of the EPA for FY2011, which has not been approved yet, is only $10 billion dollars. If the Clean Air Act really will save $2 trillion over the next 10 years, the entire budget of the EPA over that period of time would only amount to roughly 5% of that.
Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.