From The New York Times, Tuesday, September 14, 2010:
The federal Clean Air Act, one of the most consequential pieces of environmental and health legislation in American history, celebrated its 40th birthday on Tuesday. The law, which has been attacked by business interests since its birth as overly costly and prescriptive, is under siege again as the Environmental Protection Agency begins to invoke the law to rein in the gases that contribute to global warming.
Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, delivered an impassioned defense of the law Tuesday morning at a daylong symposium on the Clean Air Act in Washington. She said that lobbyists had falsely claimed for years that the measure and the agency’s application of it would shutter factories, kill jobs and cost billions for compliance. But each of these doomsday predictions was proved wrong, she said, asserting that the bill saves tens of thousands of lives each year and returns $40 in health and environmental benefits for every dollar in compliance cost.
“Say what you want about E.P.A.’s business sense,” she told an audience of agency officials, environmental advocates and business lobbyists, “but we certainly know how to get a return on our investment.”
Continue: The Clean Air Act Turns 40