A poor choice for EPA Administrator



Utah's governor, Mike Leavitt, is a bad choice for EPA Administrator. Pollution is a national or international problem, not a problem that states can fix on their own. That's my big problem with him, his proposing state solutions when the state is not the only one that suffers because of pollution. If you worship at the temple of market-based pollution control, this guy wouldn't be able to set up such a market because all of the externalities couldn't be factored in on a state by state basis. See the second article for proof of this. And what will happen with pollution when the state regulates it, and the polluter says its part of "interstate commerce", which states are forbidden to interfere with? Anyway, here's the bit from the Washington Post today:

AURORA, Colo., Aug. 11 -- President Bush today named Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt (R) to head the Environmental Protection Agency, pledging that the longtime advocate of state power would help to shift environmental regulation out of Washington.

And for good measure, this was in the Post this past Sunday:

One tranquil night in June, the air pollution monitors at Shenandoah National Park registered a swift and curious spike in smog, and the trouble wasn't coming from the sanctuary's abundant trees and wildlife.

The pollutants were blowing in from the Midwest, wafting toward the East Coast and along the way tripping air-quality monitors in pristine refuges and threatening worse concentrations in cities. For the Washington area, it was the start of the worst stretch of ozone pollution this summer.

(snip)

Area leaders will meet this week to consider another plan to reduce local emissions in hopes of coming into compliance with federal regulations. The costs to businesses, consumers and governments of the existing and new measures, which include reformulated gasoline and new kinds of paint, have not been calculated precisely. But they will run at least into the tens of millions of dollars annually, officials say.

"There is a significant equity issue here," said Joan Rohlfs, chief of air-quality planning at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which coordinates area pollution plans. "Some say it's just a local problem. But you have to look at the bigger picture, too."

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