The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has sent a report to the White House suggesting relaxing a 2011 rule that limits the release of the toxic chemical mercury from coal plants, The New York Times reports.
If adopted, the change would stop the EPA from including positive health effects – known as “co-benefits” – that come from reducing pollutants other than those being targeted.
Under President Obama, the EPA estimated that it would cost plants $9.6 billion a year to comply with the new rules, but the accompanying reductions in soot and nitrogen oxide would save between $37 billion to $90 billion in yearly health costs – and prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks.
But under President Trump, the EPA says that it was inappropriate to count these “co-benefits”.
It’s the latest in the Trump administration’s rollbacks of Obama-era health and environmental regulations on polluting industries, particularly coal companies – which incidentally were one of the major donors to the President’s inauguration fund.
That said, our Government is hardly doing better. This week the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report arguing global greenhouse gas emissions must reach zero by about 2050 in order to stop global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But Federal Environment Minister Melissa Price – who used to work in the mining sector – has told the ABC’s AM program that the 91 leading scientists behind the report have got it wrong.
“Every year, there’s new technology with respect to coal and what its contribution is to emissions,” she said.
“To say that it’s got to be phased out by 2050 is drawing a very long bow.”
Right. When we’re all living in a barren wasteland, we’ll remind ourselves of that.
