Fouling the Clean Air Act

In a largely hidden component of its attack on the federal budget, the House of Representatives has approved a key Republican campaign promise to big business: protecting it from what the new majority calls the handcuffs of environmental safeguards. The Republicans would cuff the Environmental Protection Agency instead. If the Republicans prevail in the Senate and overcome a White House veto, they would hobble the Clean Air Act, probably the most successful U.S. law protecting health and the environment, and threaten the authority of California and several other states to use it to fight pollution and global warming. The Clean Air Act has meant fewer hospitalizations and missed workdays, and would save a projected $2 trillion in 2020 alone by reducing asthma, chronic bronchitis and premature deaths from lung disease. Now, having been given the go-ahead by the Supreme Court, the EPA is using it to cut back on carbon dioxide pollution, the prime culprit behind our changing climate. But some of the nation's biggest polluters have teamed up with the Republicans to try to stop progress"as the evidence of global warming grows . . .