Both sides are misrepresenting environmental progress

Air keeps getting cleaner, living standards keep rising, the economy keeps growing -- on air pollution at least, we are having our quiche and eating it too.

Kicking off this newsletter I promised to cover many topics including “Environmental regulation, which is interesting, I swear.” Really, I swear!

Here All Predictions Wrong offers a minor example that shows the good and bad of the field. Soon we’ll look at a much larger topic area, including auto rules the White House announced today – the quandary that environmental progress is getting ever-better while political and media grasp of the environment gets ever-worse.

Twenty years ago the world was said to be imperiled because of air emissions of mercury from U.S power plants. Scary stories regarding mercury, a neurotoxin in one of its chemical forms, were common. MERCURY WARNING ISSUED, headlined the New York Times in 2001. The story referred to mercury emitted from power plants settling into water and entering the food chain via fish, which is a genuine health concern. Also a genuine concern is that airborne mercury may settle near a power plant, where there are likely to be low-income communities. Read the coverage from 20 years ago and you’d think millions of people would have been badly harmed by mercury by now.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

A knock-down drag-em-out fight among the left, right, the media and fundraisers broke out over mercury, toplined by a prominent GOP senator switching parties to show his solidarity with Democrats trying to torpedo President George W. Bush’s mercury control plan.

A few days ago Joe Biden’s EPA announced a mercury control plan. NPR, the New York Times and the Washington Post treated the news as a huge victory over an environmental menace. None of these outlets mentioned that airborne mercury – at least, the kind from U.S. power plants --  has long been in decline as a threat.

Nor did any of these outlets mention the EPA says Biden’s plan will reduce airborne mercury from power plants by 82 pounds per annum over 12 years, versus a current 522 tons of global mercury emissions from power plants per annum. That’s a reduction of about one one-thousandth of one percent. And it’s assuming China, India and other nations, where nearly all mercury emissions originate (see the above link), don’t increase their output through the period.

The New York Times, Washington Post and NPR played up Biden’s announcement, played down the minor impact, because that conformed to the environmental aspect of The Narrative -- evil forces want to destroy the planet and government is our sole hope! Never mind The Narrative doesn’t explain how the evil forces would benefit from destroying the planet.

Now the punchline – Biden’s mercury control plan is a good idea. I’d vote for it in a New York minute.

Why shouldn’t we do whatever we can to reduce a neurotoxin in the environment? Even small increments of progress are still progress.

In the course of seeking further to reduce mercury emissions, the United States may invent something that can be shared with the world. That’s been the cycle in smog reduction, where the United States made fundamental leaps (the catalytic converter, reformulated gasoline, clean diesel) then given this tech to the world.

More broadly, Biden’s is a good idea because it is an air-pollution reduction plan. All air pollution reduction plans – not some, all – have been successful and cost less than anticipated.

In the last 50 years, between regulations and engineering advances, U.S. air pollution (of the Clean Air Act “criteria” pollutants that cause smog, tiny particulates and acid rain) has declined a net 78 percent. In that period population has grown 54 percent, power production has almost trebled and economic output (adjusted for inflation) has almost trebled.

The big decline in air pollution is among the least-reported basic facts in American public discourse: not reported because it’s hopeful rather than anxiety-inducing.

The drop in air pollution – including Stage One smog alerts down from common to rare in the Los Angeles basin – has not harmed the economy nor interfered with creation of more jobs.

The air keeps getting cleaner, living standards keep rising, the economy keeps growing -- on air pollution at least, we are having our quiche and eating it too. The new mercury rule is likely to fall into this pattern of improvement at little net expense.

This is a primary reason to think that greenhouse gases, which are an air pollution problem, can be reduced faster and at lower cost than alarmists on both sides assert, with little if any economic harm.

But The Narrative, and those who profit from it, doesn’t want to hear that things are getting better. The Narrative wants to hear the world is ending, because this keeps the public in a state of fear.

The Counter-Narrative wants to hear that regulations are stifling the economy, which isn’t happening any more than the world is ending. But the Counter-Narrative keeps the wealthy right, like Clarence Thomas’s Hitler-loving patron, making donations, picking up checks and offering “hospitality.”

Here's a short (admittedly simplified) history of mercury in the air.

In the 1990s, studies showed mercury entering the food chain through fish could harm health, especially of pregnant women. Most mercury in the environment occurs naturally; it seemed eminently sensible to reduce the artificial contribution. Reducing toxic compounds emitted to the environment is a primary goal of clean tech, and for the most part, is going well.

In 2002 President George W. Bush proposed a crackdown on mercury emissions as part of a larger Clear Skies Act restraining many forms of air pollution.

Was the left happy? The left was apoplectic.

Partly the left was enraged because Senate sponsors of Bush’s bill included James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a far-right senator who said there was no global warming. He could not be allowed an environmental credential!

Partly the left was enraged at the thought that George W. Bush – who’d overseen state-level pollution reductions as governor of Texas – could attain an environmental credential.

And partly the left was enraged because the Clear Skies Act proposed to reduce mercury emissions via cap-and-trade. Cap-and-trade worked really well against acid rain, which has nearly disappeared. But cap-and-trade allows people in the business world to make their own decisions about the best way to cut pollution. This the left cannot abide – government must make the decisions and punish business for success.

When the Clear Skies plan was announced, stories propagated in the MSM about how Bush’s bill would lead to horrible, horrible harm to human health – that there must be total elimination of mercury emissions, which could only be achieved by banning use of coal.

Coal is a dirty fuel, and it’s good that coal consumption is in long-term decline in the United States. But banning coal use would mean a huge decline in prosperity for only a small improvement in the ecosphere. Gradual bettering of coal combustion efficiency (so less coal is needed per kilowatt) and of “stack scrubbers” that clean air emissions seemed the way to go. But that did not satisfy The Narrative.

Over in the underground bunker headquarters of The Counter-Narrative, early in the George W. Bush administration the right was apoplectic regarding something called New Source Review. Under NSR, a power plant that installed improved equipment had to get a fresh set of permits, rather than benefit from various grandfather clauses. The Counter-Narrative said this would be incredibly, incredibly expensive, though experience with new power plant equipment showed pollution and fuel use were reduced without harm to economic growth.

The left was busy exaggerating risk; the right, exaggerating cost.

At the time Senator James Jeffords of Vermont was one of the few remaining New England Republicans, a now-extinct species that favored small government and low taxes along with civil rights and conservation. Extinction of the New England Republicans, voices of reason, is a cause of America’s current partisan discord.

Long story short, Jeffords became an independent so he could caucus with the Democrats and alter committee chairmanships in such a way as to prevent Bush’s Clear Skies Act from reaching the Senate floor. For three straight years Clear Skies died in committee, and that was that.

“That was that” meant no campaign against mercury, supposedly an ultra-mega threat.

Later Barack Obama’s EPA wrote some mercury reduction rules couched in incomprehensible bureaucratese. The result was sure to be years of litigation, and this happened. 

When Trump took office, he was accused of “rolling back” Obama’s mercury initiative. Here NPR last week yet again accused Trump of “rolling back.” The Narrative loves the term “rolling back” because it sounds properly negative while avoiding any mention of inconveniently positive outcomes.

Which is what happened with mercury. While nearly everything that’s happened in Washington and in the New York media has been bad, nearly everything that’s happened at power plants has been good.

When George W. Bush proposed to regulate mercury, U.S. power plants and other “point sources” (that is, not vehicles) were emitting about 100 tons of mercury per annum.

Bush wanted to reduce that number to 15 tons, which the left angrily rejected.

By 2018 the number had declined to 18 tons per annum, because of improved tech and more use of natural gas instead of coal, without any economic problems. Mercury air emissions are now well on the way to negligible, in the United States at least.

This could have happened years ago, except for the desires of both parties and the extremes of ideology to exaggerate for reasons of fundraising and keeping the public scared; plus the irresponsibility of the MSM in refusing to report when environmental news is auspicious.

As we’ll soon see, the MSM refused to report when greenhouse gases declined, too. It’s a much larger story – with the same dynamic.

Bonus: I’d Rather Be Blue Mercury. Considering mercury is a toxin that should be kept out of the environment, why is Blue Mercury a luxury skin care brand?

Blue Mercury products are intended to be rubbed onto the skin, or burned in candles to place emissions into the air – exactly the exposure pathways the EPA wants to prevent! Here is a Minnesota Department of Health study on harm done to women by mercury in skin cremes.

Presumably the expensive products sold in Blue Mercury boutiques -- $195 for a tiny vial of “neck renewal firming serum” -- don’t actually contain methyl mercury. But why does the company name celebrate a toxin? It would be like calling your health food store Blue Cadmium.

Bonus: Jim Jeffords Fun Fact. After Jeffords retired from the Senate in 2006, Bernie Sanders won his seat.