Clean Air Act of 1977 Evidence
03/01/2011
Environmental Protection Agency. March 2011.
The results of this analysis of the costs and benefits of the Clean Air Act are stunning. “Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act: Second Prospective Study—1990-2020” claims that by 2020, benefits are estimated to fall in the $2 trillion range, with costs amounting to a mere $65 billion. The vast majority of the benefits will be seen in the lives saved by the law, which amount to an estimated 230,000 prevented early deaths.
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05/19/2009
Environmental Defense Fund. May 19, 2009.
“Air quality measures consistently cost less than predicted”, clearly shows, in pie graph form, how wildly exaggerated industry predictions of clean air costs are.
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01/01/2009
Environmental Defense Fund. 2009.
"There They Go Again: The Sky is Falling Attacks on Healthier Air" showcases industry and media cost and joblessness exaggerations relating to cleaner air policy.
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02/01/2004
Ruth Ruttenberg and Associates, Inc. Public Citizen. February 2004.
“Not Too Costly, After All” shows that regulators regularly overestimate the costs of their own regulations. “Regulatory agencies often overestimate the cost of regulatory compliance, sometimes substantially. There are dozens of examples of costs being inflated and the potential for innovation and productivity-enhancing activities ignored.”
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06/01/2000
Richard D. Morgenstern, William A. Pizer, and Jhih-Shyang Shih. Resources for the Future. June 2000.
“Jobs vs. The Environment: An Industry-Level Study” spotlights four industries that operate under intense environmental regulations: plastics, paper, steel, and petroleum. The authors find that “increased environmental spending generally does not cause a significant change in industry level employment.”
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11/15/1999
Environmental Protection Agency. November 15, 1999.
The EPA’s takes a look ahead from to the “Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act - 1990 to 2010” and finds “that the monetizable benefits [from the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990] alone exceeded the direct compliance costs by four to one.”
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01/01/1995
Stephen M. Meyer. Journal of Environmental Law & Practice. 1995.
"The economic impact of environmental regulation" is Meyer’s report on the findings of a study that analyzed the impact of environmental protection laws upon American economic performance. The national Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act are all named, although he uses a state-by-state analysis. The study analyzes job growth and business failure during the period of 1982-1992 (the height of American de-industrialization), and finds that “neither national nor state economic performance have been significantly or systematically affected by environmental regulation”.
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