• According to a new EPA analysis, the "value of a statistical life" is now worth $6.9 million, which is nearly $1 million less than it was five years ago. This is important politically because when government agencies create regulations about things like air pollution, they use this statistical value to weigh the costs against the benefits of a proposed rule. Explains the AP, "Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted."
• John McCain talked up green jobs at a campaign stop in Michigan on Thursday. "Green technologies, my friends, are a part or a major, major impetus to the improvement of America's economy," said the Republican candidate for president.
• Conservative activists are trying to make sure McCain's views on global warming stay off the Republican platform this year.
• New Jersey, which laid out some ambitious climate change plans last year, missed its first deadline for meeting those goals.
• Several environmental groups sent a letter to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee asking it to suspend the federal biofuels mandate, arguing that the mandate is encouraging an increase in unsustainable biofuels production practices in both the United States and abroad. Signing onto the letter: Clean Air Task Force, Environmental Working Group, and Friends of the Earth.
• Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) gave a speech on Wednesday laying out 10 guidelines for climate legislation. "Finding the Path Forward on Climate Legislation" gives a pretty good sense of where the senator stands on what a climate bill should entail.
• The cousins Udall find that their well-known name can be a blessing and a curse. Both Democratic Senate candidates, Tom Udall is running in New Mexico and Mark Udall is running in Colorado.
• John Warner (R-Va.) suggested reimplementing a national speed limit of 55 miles per hour to ease the pain of soaring gas prices. In 1974 Congress set a national speed limit to help deal with energy shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo. It was lifted in 1995.
• The Congressional delegation from Massachusetts is urging the federal government to consider leasing a portion of federal waters off the state's coast to a company that wants to test a floating wind turbine.
• California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) are teaming up to push for a $9.3 billion bond for state water projects.
• Despite soaring energy prices, Congress may cut another $26 million in funding from a program designed to help low-income Americans make their homes more energy efficient. The plan is getting a frosty reception from a bipartisan group of senators from cold-weather states.
• The Michigan state government reports that it is using 18 percent less energy than it was five years ago.
• The North Carolina Senate passed a bill that guts regulations set in 1995 requiring hog farms to protect their neighbors from odor and air and water pollution, and requires them to have the consent of neighboring property owners before they can make major changes to their hog operation. The bill will now go before the state House.
• Pennsylvania environmental chief Kathleen McGinty is resigning from her post. Grist interviewed her about her ambitious green goals for the state a few years ago. McGinty was also chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality under Bill Clinton.
• Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney outlined the party's goals for this year's race.
• NativeEnergy Inc. is vending carbon offsets to the Democratic National Convention staffers who are coming to Denver next month.
• RH Reality Check has an interesting series on population and climate change looking at both the environmental benefits of empowering women and the burdens that environmental problems place on women in particular.
Mark Warner (D-Va.)
Can EPA regulations on CO2 be blocked?
While scientists fight over BPA studies, Congress could just act
Comments
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GreenMom Posted 2:53 pm
13 Jul 2008
The reason I'm counseling caution here is that different monetary values per life saved have fundamental bases that are inherently different across EPA rules. For example:
the year for which you're adjusting -- i.e. are you looking at 1999 dollars, 2002 dollars, 2006 dollars, etc. (The inflation rate used varies less across EPA rules than the dollar year does).
the compliance year of the regulation - i.e. the year the pollution reductions mandated by a rule are realized. The dollar figure for a rule that has a 2015 compliance year is going to be different than the dollar figure for a rule with a 2020 compliance year.
I believe this may be the biggest mistake in the AP story -- he seems to have compared rules with different compliance years, and lo and behold, the dollar figures were significantly different.
God knows the Administration has wreaked havoc with EPA rules over the last eight years -- but reporters still need to do their homework lest they look stupid. I think this guy just got it wrong.
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John former Marine Posted 11:09 pm
13 Jul 2008
Are kids that live in New Orleans neighborhoods on top of pesticide dumps worth $6.9M each? I think there is an assumption here that we live in an economic democracy. Perhaps $6.9M is the "average"...and, like everything else, since 10% of our population controls 80% of our wealth, I'm sure the "value", in terms of dollars, of that top 10% has gone up considerably in the past few years. In fact, the people at the top are probably "worth" $100 million or so each, maybe a lot more....which definitely entitles them to living in protected, clean, safe communities. If the value of the other 90% of us has gone down to...say...$1 million each, then I suppose it would follow that it's not so worthwhile to stop construction of a new coal-fired power plant upwind of our working-class communities, to limit the use of pesticides toxic to the human beings who pick our tomatoes, or to make a chemical plant upriver from a poor community clean up their act. A poor kid who gets leukemia is worth less than a rich kid.
All of this economic news makes it clearer and clearer to me that environmental issues and social issues cannot be disconnected. As MLK said, we will never have true democracy until we have economic democracy.
When we see numbers like this....that the average American (not counting illegals who do all the dirtiest work, I'm sure) has gone down in value, I would say it's safe to assume that what has really happened is that the value of working-class Americans has plummeted, working poor and immigrants has hit rock-bottom, and the rich are more "valuable" than ever before.
Il faut cultiver notre jardin.
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GreenMom Posted 12:54 am
15 Jul 2008
...but the economists at EPA doing the analyses use Census figures and national average earnings estimates -- they're not calling out specific groups of people or devaluing anyone.
For better or for worse, you can't get a regulation through the political system without a monetary estimate attached to it, and the EPA economists -- who are career people, not politicos - do the best they can. Under (god willing) President Obama, you'll still see dollar values attached to regulations, and they won't look all that different.
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