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Sunday, June 12th, 2011

Death By Pollution: How the Obama Administration Just Put Thousands of Lives at Risk

Author:     JOSHUA FRANK
Source:     AlterNet
Publication Date:     3-Jun-11
 Link: Death By Pollution: How the Obama Administration Just Put Thousands of Lives at Risk
Stephan:   You can measure to what degree the Obama Administration has been captured by the corporate virtual states, by comparing what then candidate Obama said he would do, with what his administration has actually done. This is one such story; and it is a very shabby one. Joshua Frank is an environmental journalist and author of 'Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush.' He is co-editor, with Jeffrey St. Clair, of 'Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland.' Frank and St. Clair are also the authors of the forthcoming book, 'Green Scare: The New War on Environmentalism.'

It must be election season. Like other prominent Democrats, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson has been making the rounds. Two weeks ago she popped up on Jon Stewart’s ‘Daily Show’ and explained that regulating toxins like mercury from coal burners across the country would prevent thousands of deaths and create jobs. She even rallied people to action.

‘Environmentalism is not a spectator sport,’ Jackson told Stewart, as if she was encouraging viewers to turn off their televisions and get busy. ‘You actually have to stand up and demand that we be vigilant in protecting our air and water.’

It was certainly a boisterous display of support for stronger environmental statues, something Jackson happens to know a little bit about. However, just one week after Jackson’s Comedy Central performance the EPA indefinitely delayed essential health protections designed to reduce public exposure to airborne toxins such as mercury, arsenic, lead, and acid gases by thousands of tons per year.

It was back in 1990 when President H.W. Bush signed Clean Air Act Amendments into law, requiring the EPA to establish emission standards limiting toxins like mercury from the largest pollution sources. One of these laws, called Boiler MACT, covers emissions from boilers that produce […]

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