Environmental Protection Evidence
06/09/2011
The National Partnership for Women and Families, a leader in the paid sick leave fight, provides a comprehensive, and frequently updated, list of studies about the policy.
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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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02/01/2011
Southern Environmental Law Center. February 2011.
This fact sheet explores four environmental policy fights from the last four years and shows us what industry said about the bill in question, from the Clean Air Act of 1990 to the Ozone Standards of 1997. They chase these quotes with facts about what actually happened.
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07/01/2005
OMB Watch. July 2005.
OMB Watch compiled this useful chart of the predicted costs of various federal regulations, including OSHA standards, and the actual costs (“The Going-Out-of-Business Myth”). It includes an “Ex Ante” and an “Ex Post” column. Very good for a quick look at the industry’s history of exaggeration.
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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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05/01/1995
By Lisa M. Roche. Journal of Environmental Health. May, 1995.
Using the New Jersey Right to Know law, advocates were able to find 318 public school districts in their state that used or held a list of 10 known carcinogens, including arsenic, benezene, vinyl chloride, and lead chromate. The study documents how these substances are used and who is exposed to them. The authors then show that the schools disposed of the toxics, or used them all up and did not order replacements.
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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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