Clean Air: A Right or a Luxury?

Abstract

N v r Q derstanding or communication. The subject of the Clean IN a 5 5Air Act is no different. Industry has for many years framed its argument against clean air in terms of choos~*~Q ing between pollution control or a prosperous economy; between the free enterprise system or government regulation; or between cheaper energy and costly environmental protection. "Either-or" debates play upon the natural emotion of fear. The effectiveness of an "either-or" polemic resides as much in the facts it omits as in the extremes it discusses. For example, much of the ongoing debate regarding the Clean Air Act has centered upon the Administration's philosophy that every regulation should undergo a cost-benefit analysis. Columnist Ellen Goodman convincingly revealed last March that cost-benefit analyses are simply not appropriate for certain areas of regulation. Her case-in-point was a Food and Drug Administration decision to delay implementation of a law passed in 1980 regulating the preparation and testing of infant baby formulas. She quoted Representative Albert Gore, D-Tenn., who asked the Food and Drug Administration, "What dollars-and-cents values do you place on the avoidance of serious brain damage in infants?" In the case of the Clean Air Act, the cost-benefit sham is a rhetorical device used by "either-or" debaters to ignore the basic distinction between the goal of clean air and the strategies for achieving that goal. Just as it is inappropriate to apply cost-benefit analysis to brain damage in infants, it is inappropriate to apply cost-benefit formulas to the standards for clean air. A Yale University study, for example, found that in the tenyear period between 1960 and 1970 (before the Clean Air Act), five additional people per 1oo,ooo population died for every additional 1,000 cars as a result of automobile pollution. On the other hand, it is appropriate to apply cost-benefit analysis to the strategies and methods for achieving those standards. It should not be surprising, however, that when one does apply such an analysis to the current