Cornwall Alliance
August 13, 2014

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims that its new rule restricting carbon dioxide emissions from power plants will improve Americans’ health.

Yet carbon dioxide (CO2) isn’t poisonous at levels more than 20 times what they now are - levels we wouldn’t likely reach for a thousand years or more even without restrictions on emissions, and even if we didn’t run out of or find better replacements for fossil fuels first.

So why does EPA claim reducing its emissions will improve Americans’ health?

Not because of its impact on global temperature, which EPA admits would be undetectable (under 0.02C in a century) and would have no measurable health benefits.

Why, then?

Because, EPA claims, reducing CO2 emissions will have the side effect of reducing emissions of conventional pollutants.

But medical doctors who are Members of Congress repudiate that notion. In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, they say:

Conventional emissions from coal-fired utilities measured on a per-kilowatt hour basis, have declined by almost 90 percent over the last several decades. Should the EPA choose to make additional claims, it is worth noting that the Agency has already attempted to justify a vast array of other regulations on addressing precisely the same concerns - from the air toxics rule to regional haze to ambient air quality standards… The American public should not tolerate perpetual re-claiming of the same health benefits in order to justify more substantial expansions of EPA regulations.

The doctors also point out that “if the EPA were to succeed in forcing coal out of the marketplace by confiscatory regulations - certainly the objective of some in the activist community demanding stronger action - the result would be the loss of some 600,000 jobs, loss of manufacturing base, aggregated loss of some $2.23 trillion in gross domestic product, and a loss of family income of some $1,200 per household per year.”

Higher prices for energy and all other goods and services, coupled with lower incomes and job losses, all driven by the new regulation, would themselves harm Americans’ health.

“Our colleague, Senator John Barrasso, also a medical doctor, published a recent report based on a literature search and specific testimony taken before the US Congress that demonstrated that extraordinary costs due to EPA regulation have profound negative impacts on public health. The report found that unemployment due to EPA regulation:

“Increases the likelihood of hospital visits, illnesses, and premature deaths in communities due to joblessness.

“Raises healthcare costs, raising questions about the claimed health savings of EPA’s regulations.

“Hurts children’s health and family well-being.”

The Congressmen/medical doctors also point out that reduced reliability of the electrical grid, caused by the unpredictable intermittency of wind and solar energy, would also threaten public health through more frequent, widespread, and intense brownouts and blackouts, like the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003 (set off by a computer failure), which killed at least 11 people, interrupted water supply, transportation, communication, and industry, and cost between $7 and $10 billion.

For the sake of Americans’ health, EPA’s proposed new carbon dioxide regulation should be scrapped!