http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/washpost/20030927/ts_washpost/a7586_2003sep26 "The report, issued this month by the Office of Management and Budget, concludes that the health and social benefits of enforcing tough new clean-air regulations during the past decade were five to seven times greater in economic terms than were the costs of complying with the rules."
It's telling, the silence this news was greeted with here. Maybe if we called a spade a spade, and said Global Warming is a WMD
Yea. It tells you that your response came a whole 11 minutes after the initial post on a Sunday near midnight. Telling? You telling a lie, maybe. I mean, I would say you have no life, but what am I doing here? Actually, since environmental issues start at home on the local level, I recycle. I run a few businesses. If, for example, I don't recycle, the company I hire to take my trash will require me to rent a bigger dumpster or visit more often.
Um, that was 24 hours without a response. Check the times again. In any case, I'd have thought conservatives would have been on here trumpeting this line: "It has pleasantly surprised some environmentalists who doubted the Bush administration would champion the benefits of government regulations, and fueled arguments that the White House should continue pushing clean-air standards rather than trying to weaken some." Isn't there some pro-Bush spin in there somewhere?
The funny thing is just how important this study really is to policy-making decisions. If a conservative White House has to admit that environmental regulations are ten times more valuable than no regulations doesn't that say something incredible about how you analyze the potential impact of any government mandates? Doesn't that imply that government is likely to do FAR more harm than good when it intervenes? I would think this study would be a bombshell on public policy analysis.
I can't find a copy of the report, so I can't say if they take energy costs into account. In the last couple of years, there hasn't been enough clean energy to meet all the winter demands, so we have had to burn more of the dirty stuff. There may be real good reasons why Bush is doing what he is doing - I just wish he could say so out loud.