COMMUNITY
it stands today . Since the Clean Air Act was passed , emissions of key air pollutants have been reduced by 73 % and have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people each year . NEPA continues to ensure that objective environmental reviews requiring disclosure and permitting public comment are implemented with every federal project with projected impacts on the environment . Decades later , the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1970 established programs to phase out chemicals depleting the ozone layer , authorized programs for acid deposition control , and allowed programs to control 189 identified toxic pollutants . The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 signed by President Biden , among other things , makes it cheaper than ever to deploy wind and solar power generation , provides for appropriate infrastructure for electric vehicles , and includes funding to lower wealth communities where environmental inequalities are rampant .
Nevertheless , industry and political pushback remains present with every regulatory add-on in the name of short-term costs , employment reallocation and detrimental effects to the general economy . It ’ s true for instance that the Clean Air Act of 1970 has cost an estimated $ 523 billion in the aggregate since its
inception . But it ’ s also true that the same law provided for approximately $ 22 trillion in benefits for public health and the economy in 1990 dollars once the value of human health and welfare are taken into account . Indeed , the environmental regulations that firms habitually oppose may result in their own benefit . Case in point : the Toxic Release Inventory ( TRI ) database required under the 1986 Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act ( EPCRA ) carried significant compliance costs for firms . These firms then benefitted from such necessary monitoring and control systems that tangibly prevented costly raw material from being destroyed by environmentally inefficient systems ( to the tune of billions of tons worth of materials ). There are also those organizations cleverly circumventing new regulations based on sound research that may later find themselves spending disproportionately more if and when calamity hits . But I digress .
For this Earth Day , of course plant a tree . But , please also remember and / or appreciate the concerted effort shared among the U . S . population and government to create swift environmental change ( or any change , for that matter ) without regard to ideology or outside agenda . After all , April 22nd is my birthday .
18 March / April 2024