Copyright 1999 The Washington Post
The Washington
Post
December 22, 1999, Wednesday, Final Edition
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A32
LENGTH: 415 words
HEADLINE:
Cleaning the Air
BODY:
WITH TIME running
out, and with little hope of getting big legislative projects through Congress,
President Clinton is trying to build an environmental legacy. He has already
taken steps to reduce water pollution and to protect federal lands from
commercial development. Yesterday he issued ambitious new rules on air
pollution. In so doing he took on an adversary that some list among the great
public menaces of our times: the sport-utility vehicle. There is no doubt that
cleaner air makes for better health; even the auto makers and oil refiners, who
will bear the brunt of the new regulations, freely concede
that. The question, as with all regulations, is whether the
benefits are big enough to justify the costs. The answer appears to be yes,
though cost-benefit analysis is never an exact science.
The
administration proposes to cleanse air in two ways. First, it demands that
better catalytic converters be fitted to the tailpipes of cars and -- more
notably -- to SUVs, light trucks and mini-vans, which together account for fully
half of new vehicle sales. Both the administration and the car makers say this
will raise the cost of the average car by less than $ 100; trucks and SUVs,
which have hitherto been subject to lax standards, will cost between $ 200 and $
350 extra. Second, the administration orders oil refiners to reduce the
sulphur content of gasoline by about 90
percent. It claims this will boost pump prices by two cents per gallon; the
refiners say three to five cents.
The total cost of the new rules may
come to between $ 5 billion and $ 8 billion a year, depending on whether you
believe the administration or the industry. Either way, that is considerably
less than the financial benefits that cleaner air promises. The administration
puts those at around $ 25 billion a year, a number that reflects the production
of workers who currently die prematurely because of pollution, as well as
savings from reduced medical costs and work absences. Even if the actual savings
turn out to be just a third of the administration's number, the
regulations will have paid for themselves.
Environmental standards often come at the expense of economic growth:
Hard trade-offs must be made between poverty reduction and the protection of the
planet. But in some instances environmental regulation is a
win-win proposition. Cleaner air appears to be one such case, and the Clinton
administration is to be commended for pushing ahead with it.
LOAD-DATE: December 22, 1999