March madness: How Bush and other bad guys juke the pollution stats

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



March madness: How Bush and other bad guys juke the pollution stats
By Frank O'Donnell
March 19th, 2008 - 1:40pm ET


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Perhaps this is a good time to remind one and all of little-told stories that can have a big impact on the air we breathe -- and even see.

We offer three for your consideration – all of them involve what cops on HBO’s “The Wire” call “juking the stats” – that is, playing little accounting tricks to alter the outcome of various analysis. And all of them could lead to more pollution than if things were reckoned honestly.

Cost-benefit baloney: As I noted last week, EPA chief Stephen Johnson has renewed an often-repeated industry pitch to require that national clean air standards be based in part on an assessment of the projected costs and benefits. There are a lot of reasons why this is a pretty dumb idea, but let’s consider just one: that the bean counters at the White House Office of Management and Budget can juke the stats.

And, in fact, they’ve done exactly that. During the past several years behind the scenes they have ordered the EPA to radically revise – and lower – the projected benefits of cleaning up the air. Some of this stuff is really dense, but the bottom line is that OMB ordered EPA to change a whole series of assumptions used to calculate benefits, with the result that projected benefits are relatively much lower than they would have been under the method EPA used in prior years.

Want to see an example? Take the pollution standards for diesel trains and ships announced last week. Two years ago, our friends with the state and local clean-air regulators performed an analysis of the benefits that would be achieved by applying pollution standards comparable to that required for diesel trucks or off-road engines.

They used the exact same methodology that EPA had used in its 2004 off-road rule.
http://www.4cleanair.org/Loco-Marine/Loco-MarineAnalysis.pdf

And they found that setting tougher standards for trains and ships would prevent nearly 4,000 premature deaths a year by 2030. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/march-madness-how-bush-and-other-bad-guys-juke-pollution-stats