Inside Climate News is reporting on a new study that throws deregulated polluted drinking water all over this Republican administration’s claims that it is too costly to implement many of the environmental rules put in place under the Obama administration. Jessica Wentz from Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law—an author in the study—told Inside Climate News that the projected costs of these rules down the road per year are dwarfed by the costs of not implementing them.
They found that the total costs associated with those rules—the costs for companies to comply, higher prices for consumers and other indirect costs—were projected to be about $84 billion per year in 2030. But in that same year, the benefits—including the direct savings from lower carbon emissions, improved public health from lower emissions of pollutants, and new jobs created by the rules—were expected to be worth nearly $370 billion. They also found that the rules would prevent the emission of the equivalent of nearly 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2030.
With proposals to step away from our global community, while rolling back car emissions rules, and opening the floodgates on offshore drilling, Trump and his crew of death-eaters have a vision of the future that has the scope of Mr. Magoo staring at a wall of fire. The big savings that Trump is thwarting would be in the Auto Efficiency Standards.
Total benefits: $318.2 billion
Total costs: $78.1 billion
The report looks at four sets of regulations on the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks. Some of these have already gone into effect on existing vehicles, but others are planned for coming years, and Trump has said he would have the government review them. The researchers found that the benefits from fuel savings alone would more than outweigh the cost of shifting to more efficient vehicles.
Forget about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy involved with rolling back environmental protections, the basic economics—the only semi-defendible position—is indefensible.