How EPA could destroy 7.3 million jobs

Environmental Protection Agency officials Wednesday provided power companies and states with new guidance on EPA’s plans to regulate greenhouse gases. A D.C. lobbyist for two major power companies told Bloomberg News that “the energy and manufacturing sectors will essentially be in a construction moratorium” as a consequence. Here we are, with 15 million Americans unemployed and millions more underemployed, and the EPA is moving blindly ahead with new regulations that will increase dramatically the energy costs of U.S. industries, reducing their competitiveness and profitability, and making it less likely they will hire. The new EPA rules call for a reduction in the national ambient air-quality standard for ground-level ozone, a precursor of smog, from 75 parts per billion to between 60 and 70 parts per billion, a cut of up to 20 percent. While this might seem innocuous enough, setting a more-stringent ozone standard will in fact cause economic havoc. Hundreds of U.S. cities and counties already don’t meet the current standard. If the EPA tightens the rules, these counties will fall permanently into noncompliance, even with costly investments in new pollution controls. Under the Clean Air Act’s nondegradation provision, state and local governments are not permitted to take actions that would worsen air quality, even if the area is in compliance with EPA standards. If a county or city is not in compliance, its economy won’t be able to grow — so the EPA’s proposal would spell economic stagnation for many communities. A study by the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a 75-year old organization that provides economic research and training for business executives, warns that the new standard would destroy an estimated 7.3 million jobs nationwide and add $1 trillion annually in new regulatory costs beginning in 2020...more