Clean Air Act of 1990

Clean Air Act of 1990

The 1990 Clean air Act amendments reduced sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide by instituting a two phase cap and trade program.  Phase I applied to the largest sources of emissions, and phase II applied to nearly all fossil fuel power plants.  Additionally, this act required the complete phase-out of lead in fuels by 1995 and encouraged the use of low sulfur fuels.  It mandated the use of Best Available Control Technologies (BACT) for major sources of pollution.  These amendments authorized a program to control 189 toxic pollutants, including those previously regulated by the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.  Finally, these amendments mandated the phase-out of certain ozone depleting CFCs, including some refrigerants.

Commentary

US Capitol building

Darrel Issa’s Government Handover

January 05, 2011

By Donald Cohen and Peter Dreier. Posted on Huffington Post. January 5, 2011.

Newly emboldened as chair of the House’s key investigative committee, California Cong. Darrell Issa, the conservative Republican, sent letters to more than 150 business lobby groups, asking them to identify government rules that they want eliminated.

Issa wants to hand the government over to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a who’s who of corporate America. The new Republican Congress is their opportunity to get rid of those pesky environmental laws, consumer product safety laws and even rules to prevent another Wall St. financial train wreck.

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Clean Fuel

The Historical Record of Job Growth and Environmental Protection: A Convenient Truth for Climate Legislation

June 18, 2009

Laurie Johnson. Posted on the Natural Resources Defense Council's Switchboard blog. June 18, 2009. 

Over three decades of experience with environmental regulation show that investments in environmental protection, coupled with GDP growth, led to an increase in jobs that were orders of magnitude larger than any job losses caused by environmental requirements. The dire job loss predictions by industry simply never came to pass. Instead, tens of thousands of new jobs were created every year, much more than the job reductions per year that various government agencies and academic analyses found after the fact, in only a few sectors.[1] We detail the data further below.

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smokestack and dirty air

Crying Wolf Again: Big Business Gearing up for a Fight Against Obama’s Environmental Program

May 11, 2009

By Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen. Posted on Huffington Post. May 11, 2009.

In its first 100 days, the Obama administration did more to address global warming and the environmental crisis than the Bush administration did in eight years.

Obama knows, though, that the big environmental battles are still to come. In a interview last month, Lisa Jackson, Obama's EPA administrator, anticipated how opponents would attack the president's environmental reforms. "If you look at the history of environmental laws in this country, " she explained, "every time ... the lobbyists say, 'Oh, this will shut down the American economy. Every last one of you will lose jobs.' It's always these overblown, doomsday scenarios that overlook ... the fact that you can indeed build an economy towards green energy."

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Cry Wolf Quotes

The Clean Air Act's Unduly stringent and extremely costly provisions could seriously threaten this nation's economic expansion.

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Letter written by Milton Friedman and James Buchanan, From the Wall Street Journal.
10/19/1990 | Full Details | Law(s): Clean Air Act of 1990

The Chamber said that the proposed legislation would [Amending the Clean Air Act would ] vastly increase the cost and complexity [of the law by more than $20 billion a year]

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Chamber of Commerce opposes the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act.
08/23/1990 | Full Details | Law(s): Clean Air Act of 1990

[We are] certain [that] the large installed inventory which we depend upon in this country cannot survive. … We will see shutdowns of refrigeration equipment in supermarkets. … We will see shutdowns of chiller machines, which cool our large office buildings, our hotels, and hospitals.

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The Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute, House Committee on Energy and Commerce. January, 1990.
01/01/1990 | Full Details | Law(s): Clean Air Act of 1990

The effects include serious long-term losses in domestic output and employment, heavy cost burdens on manufacturing industries, and a resultant gradual contraction of the entire industrial base. The irony of this bleak scenario is that these economic hardships are borne with no real assurance they would be balanced by a cleaner, healthier environment.

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The National Association of Manufacturers, The New Republic, 1987
01/01/1987 | Full Details | Law(s): Clean Air Act of 1990
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Evidence

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Backgrounders & Briefs

Good Rules: Ten Stories Of Successful Regulation

Demos looks at ten laws and rules that we take for granted.

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