{"id":406,"date":"2011-02-11T11:09:54","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T16:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/?p=406"},"modified":"2011-02-16T21:13:52","modified_gmt":"2011-02-17T02:13:52","slug":"newsflash-clean-air-act-saves-lives-boosts-gdp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/2011\/02\/11\/newsflash-clean-air-act-saves-lives-boosts-gdp\/","title":{"rendered":"Newsflash: Clean Air Act saves lives, boosts GDP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have sometimes been the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/2010\/12\/02\/jobs\/\">bearers<\/a> of bad news on jobs in the past. Not bad news, really. <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/2011\/01\/21\/us-and-china-and-the-planet\/\">Realistic news<\/a>. So excuse me for being a bit giddy at the sight of the latest piece of very realistic\u2014and very good\u2014news.<\/p>\n<p>The EPA just released a new <a href=\"http:\/\/democrats.energycommerce.house.gov\/index.php?q=news\/waxman-and-rush-release-epa-analysis-detailing-how-the-clean-air-act-is-good-for-jobs-and-the-e\">White Paper<\/a> that turns out to be as green as it is red, white, and blue.<\/p>\n<h3>Lives and health at a bargain price<\/h3>\n<p>First, it starts with what really matters when considering the impact of the Clean Air Act\u2014health and the corresponding social and economic benefits:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>18 million child respiratory illnesses prevented in 1990 alone,<\/li>\n<li>200,000 lives saved that year (160,000 in 2010),<\/li>\n<li>total benefits outpacing costs 30:1 since 1990.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are the key figures we need to keep in mind. Always.<\/p>\n<h3>Healthy kids means a healthy workforce<\/h3>\n<p>For anyone who isn&#8217;t yet satisfied but worries about the economic impact of the Clean Air Act, there&#8217;s more good news:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Protecting children from neurotoxins leads to workers with higher IQs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That should be an obvious statement. It also turns out to come with real economic benefits. The latest study by Harvard&#8217;s Dale Jorgenson <em>et al<\/em> shows that the Clean Air Act has <a href=\"http:\/\/yosemite.epa.gov\/ee\/epa\/eerm.nsf\/0\/5565fcfd16301a7485257830007fb612?OpenDocument&amp;ExpandSection=1\">boosted productivity and growth<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>GDP in 2010 is 1.5 percent higher than it would have been without the Clean Air Act.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Again, that&#8217;s GDP. Hard economic growth. The number that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/2010\/08\/16\/should-we-tweak-gdp-to-measure-happiness.html\">measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Clean and competitive<\/h3>\n<p>Lastly, the paper concludes with a look at competitiveness concerns. The verdict: the Clean Air Act does not harm competitiveness.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not as strong as saying that the Clean Air Act improves U.S. competitiveness. Improving productivity also improves competitiveness, and combining the standard competitiveness arguments with Jorgenson&#8217;s productivity results may well show that to be the case.<\/p>\n<p>But no one to my knowledge has done that yet credibly. (Of course, I&#8217;d love to be proven wrong on that point.) To the full credit of EPA and the credibility of its analysis, the paper does not go that far either.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/democrats.energycommerce.house.gov\/index.php?q=news\/waxman-and-rush-release-epa-analysis-detailing-how-the-clean-air-act-is-good-for-jobs-and-the-e\">White Paper<\/a> stays well within the mainstream of economic analysis of the Clean Air Act and bears plenty of good news for health, wealth, and the planet.<\/p>\n<p>Read it at your own peril. It may well be the first piece of economic analysis that makes you giddy yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Clean Air Act boosts human, environmental, and economic health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9306,330,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-101","category-politics","category-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Newsflash: Clean Air Act saves lives, boosts GDP - Market Forces<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/markets\/2011\/02\/11\/newsflash-clean-air-act-saves-lives-boosts-gdp\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Newsflash: Clean Air Act saves lives, boosts GDP - 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