War on Science - and Environment
| Pages | 22-23 |
22 | THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, September/October 2021.
Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.
Notice & Comment
the lunar dust. To congressional lead-
ers at the time, the environmental
threat was as important to national
security as the stando with the So-
viets. And lawmakers from both par-
ties, reecting public sentiment, had
a trust in science once again to come
to the rescue.
e statutes they enacted require
new science that in turn requires a re-
sponse. Ratcheting down health-based
air quality standards set with “an ad-
equate margin of safety” is key to the
Clean Air Act. e Clean Water Act
insists on maintaining or restoring the
“biological integrity” of the nation’s wa-
ters. Regulations to achieve emissions
targets often require the “best available”
or sometimes “maximum achievable”
pollution reduction technology. EPA
even engages in “technology forcing”
— setting environmental goals beyond
present-day engineering capabilities.
War on Science —
and Environment
ONE voter in seven believes
that Hillary Clinton is
running a cabal of satan-
worshipping cannibalistic
pedophiles. A member of Congress
charges that last year’s wildres in the
western states were caused by Jewish
space lasers. A U.S. senator insists that
China aims to breed a race of super
soldiers by harvesting visiting athletes’
DNA when it hosts the winter Olym-
pics in 2022. e Ohio legislature re-
cently heard testimony alleging that
the COVID vaccines are magnetizing
people. According to a 2012 survey,
one in four members of the U.S. pub-
lic does not know the Earth orbits the
Sun. A poll by the Associated Press in
2014 found that four in ten Americans
dispute evolution and half do not be-
lieve the Big Bang theory.
According to Peter Lantos, report-
ing new poll results in the Skeptical
Inquirer last spring, the situation is
getting worse. Indeed, one third of the
country is now suspicious of science in
general, a larger portion of the populace
than in other surveyed nations. “People
are becoming increasingly distrustful
of science; they express doubts about
the validity of scientic ndings. One
hears popular slogans, such as that the
scientic method doesn’t work; science
has an agenda; science is unreliable.”
is is bad news for environmental
protection, which is based on govern-
ment’s using the best available science
to require public and private actions.
e signal environmental statutes
were passed by a Congress dominated
by veterans of World War II. In that
conict, the Manhattan Project showed
what government-funded science could
produce when it is a matter of national
security. It is hard, however, to see a
weapon of mass destruction serving as a
positive example. But there were other
miracle inventions during that war that
have unequivocally beneted human-
ity, such as radar and digital computers.
Americans were impressed by what sci-
ence could do in a positive vein as well.
After the cessation of hostilities, law-
makers established government fund-
ing of basic research on an ongoing
basis by creating the National Science
Foundation. But national security came
back as a driver of government projects
during the Cold War. When Americans
were shocked by the launch of the rst
articial satellite by the Soviet Union,
the U.S. response was to invest even
more billions in science and engineer-
ing research. e Apollo Program that
won the ensuing space race became the
new standard for what government-
funded science could achieve for na-
tional security when put to the test,
although this one had a justication in
scientic exploration as well.
It is no coincidence that all the
major environmental statutes were
passed during the decade that began
with Americans regularly treading
air pollution, heat waves,
seasons and insect-borne
illnesses all contribute to
those costs, according to
[a] report from the Medi-
cal Society Consortium
on Climate and Health,
the Natural Resources
Defense Council, and
the Wisconsin Health
The annual health costs
of using fossil fuels and
resulting extreme weath-
er events from climate
change total more than
$800 billion, according to
a new analysis.
Hospitalizations, lost
wages, premature deaths
and even prescription
medications caused by
Professionals for Climate
Action.
Particulate matter
pollution alone, they
estimate, created $820
billion in health care costs
and killed 107,000 people
prematurely. Ground-lev-
el ozone also comes with
a high price tag — $7.9
billion — and led to 795
premature deaths and
more than 4,000 respira-
tory-related hospitaliza-
tions in 2002. . . .
“Climate change is an
underrecognized public
health problem,” said
NRDC climate and health
scientist Vijay Limaye,
who co-authored the
study. — E&E News
Annual Cost of Fossil Fuel Use $820 Billion in U.S. Alone
The deck is stacked against
people of color, for almost
every emission source.
The recipe we’ve had for im-
proving air quality for the last 50
years, which has worked well for
the country overall, is not a good
recipe for solving environmental
inequality.
— Engineer Joshua Apte
commenting on Environmental
Protection Agency National
Emissions Inventory
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