What the Ozone Nonregulations Won't Prevent

I know I'm beating a dead horse (or, at least, a horse Barack Obama won't feed until he gets himself reelected, and one whose entire herd the Rs and Ts want sent to the glue factory), but here are a few more relevant items about the stricter ozone regulations the President won't enact.

The federal regulations would have only established a goal for state air pollution programs, and so wouldn't have cost anything now. From a letter to the NY Times from an instructor in environmental law at Syracuse:

"...The withdrawn standard, however, would establish a goal for state air pollution programs and therefore produces no immediate costs at all.

"Companies will incur costs only many years from now after states translate these goals into specific requirements for polluters. And if history is any guide, those costs will have a vanishingly small effect on employment, and some of that effect may be positive.

"Environmental regulations account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of mass layoffs. An administration seriously concerned about unemployment, rather than appeasing polluters and their allies, would focus its attention elsewhere.

"The recession does not justify sacrificing thousands of lives by suspending a crucial health-protective standard being carried out many years hence.

DAVID M. DRIESEN
Syracuse, Sept. 5, 2011

The writer teaches environmental law at Syracuse University."

From Democracy Now: the new standards were projected to prevent 2,200 heart attacks and 23,000 asthma attacks every year. (To be fair, though, such people probably don't give a lot in political contributions.)

More numbers politicians don't care can be found here.