Clear the Air!

Care to breathe more mercury, sulfur dioxide, and smog? Welcome to Bush's "Clear Skies" country. Act now to stop this gutting of the Clean Air Act.

Three decades of work to cut air pollution through the Clean Air Act has come to this, the Bush administration's Clear Skies initiative which far from building on past gains will make air pollution worse. Here are the numbers: under Clear Skies, power plants can spew out 3 times as much neurotoxic mercury, 50 percent more acid-rain causing sulfur dioxide, and hundreds of thousands more tons of smog-inducing nitrogen oxides. Power plants that don't want to reduce pollution will instead be able to buy emission credits from plants elsewhere in the country. While such trading plans are already in place, Clear Skies would make them worse, delaying equitable clean-up for more than a decade. The administration has already pushed changes in New Source Review (NSR) through the EPA that allow old power plants to make major renovations without upgrading their pollution controls. Make your voice heard before the polluters get their way.

Take Action Now.

Write a letter to your Congressional Representatives and urge them to oppose Clear Skies (S. 485/H.R. 999). Call the Capital switchboard, 202/244-3121, to be connected to your congressperson Senator, or check the web sites, www.senate.gov and www.house.gov to get all their contact information.

Dear Senator/Representative,

I urge you to oppose S. 485/H.R. 999, the appallingly named "Clear Skies Initiative." If passed, the plan would gut the Clean Air Act, increasing sulfur dioxide, toxic mercury, and smog-causing nitrogen dioxide to dangerous levels, and allowing carbon dioxide to proliferate unchecked. And it would allow polluting plants to buy credits to pollute even more. Further, I ask that you support an amendment to the EPA's polluter-friendly changes to New Source Review, one that will again force polluting power plants to clean up their emissions when they renovate. Environmental issues are one of my major concerns when casting my vote, and clean air is an environmental issue of critical importance. Please oppose this hypocritical and dangerous legislation, and please support clean air.

Or write to your senator from the Natural Resource Defense Council's website

More information:

Taking the name of clean air in vain, the current administration is relaxing environmental standards and endangering our and the planet's health. The president has already used his authority over the EPA to roll back NSR, expanding loopholes that mean ancient plants can perform extensive renovations without ever making themselves less polluting--these are plants that were grandfathered in when the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, kept running only by a perverse industry operating in a perverse regulatory environment.

But luckily, widespread opposition has stalled Clear Skies. That's a good thing: the initiative would allow mercury emissions at three times current levels, as well as 50 percent more sulfur and hundreds of thousands more tons of nitrogen dioxide, which forms smog. And all this without regulating carbon dioxide, the main culprit in global warming. "Cap and Trade" provisions, though not new, mean that rich, dirty plants can buy pollution credits from more efficient plants, hurting local health and air quality; what's new and worse is that total pollution is capped at a higher level than under the current Clean Air Act. With this combination of decimated NSR and higher total emissions levels, Cap and Trade's free-market environmentalism will be even less effectual. Clean-up could stall for a decade or more.

Now's the time to write your senators and representatives, excoriating them if they favor Clear Skies, congratulating them if they favor clear skies, and urging everyone to restore NSR.

Resources:

League of Conservation Voters

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

Rep. Joe Barton's Bill HR 999

"Bush Pushes 'Clear Skies'" CBS News

"Clear Skies Initiative Clouds The Issue" Alternet

"Key Findings of the NAPA Report on New Source Review Protections" NRDC