Obama didn't stand up for environmental and social health. He failed to act against the threat of growing emissions that endanger our well being so as not to interfere with job creation (economic growth). "Business groups and Republicans in Congress had complained that meeting the new standard, which governs emissions of so-called ground-level ozone, would cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs." Article in NY Times.
This is an example of the mainstream media reporting on environmental issues as seen through the lens of politics. Now, let's turn to a publication by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Editor-in-Chief, Cynthia Mascone, for Chemical Engineering Progress, wrote in the Editor's note recently, "But as a regulated utility, it is impossible to gain regulatory approval to recover our share of the costs for validating and deploying technology without federal requirements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions already in place [italics added]."
In the main article, Carbon Capture and Storage, the authors state that the "amount of CO2 to be captured is a plant-specific decision and will likely be based on economic considerations that depend on the direction any future GHG emissions regulations might take." (p. 43)
Throughout this article and others in the August 2011 issue, there are frequent references to costs--financial costs--as the overriding consideration. Those costs can be increased or decreased based on policy decisions that affect regulations and standards. These engineers are trying to figure out what the chances are of new regulations being implemented, and when it becomes financially attractive to install technologies to reduce emissions. Until those regulations are in place, it is cheaper to do business as usual (continue polluting because they don't have to bear the costs of that pollution--we do!). However, if the government uses regulations to increase the costs of emissions, it is then that the cost of doing business will become expensive enough to warrant using carbon capturing technologies.
The government's function is to protect its citizens, or at least it was. As politicians end up ever deeper in the pockets of businesses, their purpose of protecting people is compromised. Corporate Rule and Congressional Rule are hardly distinguishable now. A related article in the NY Times did include this sentence, "But many experts say that the effects should be assessed through a nuanced tally of costs and benefits that takes into account both economic and societal factors." I wished the authors would have greatly elaborated on those societal costs, other than simply mentioning lengthening lives and reducing infant mortality and hospitalizations. They could have, of course, also taken a more anthropological approach and asked why monetary-costs are of more importance than human costs in this culture. Imagining an episode, National Geographic of the future would discuss our society in a video exposition: "This peculiar culture focused almost exclusively on its monetary factors, despite the known effects of pollution, resource depletion, social dysfunction, and an undermining of their own physical and mental health. Their religious adherence to profit-based mores almost led to their extinction."
