March 24, 2006

EPA should protect environment

By MEGAN BETTELEY
meb002@marietta.edu

In a bold move last Friday, the EPA radically reversed its strategy.  After years of frustration and heartache over the recalcitrance of the government, the loathsome self-serving attitudes of industries, and the habitual apathy of the American public, it seems the EPA decided that the best way to save the environment is to let it be destroyed.  After all, once the earth’s atmosphere resembles a smoker’s lungs, the tree huggers of the world can turn to the business tycoons and fervid industrialists and say “Told you (cough) so!?”  Or, perhaps their plan was to bring a feeble case that sought to punch holes in the Clean Air Act before a federal appeals court, so that the case could be overturned and the legal virtues of the victorious environmental act extolled in newspapers across the land.

In essence, that is what happened.  It was argued that power plants, refineries, factories and chemical plants should be exempted from the Clean Air Act.  The strange part was, the EPA (a clever acronym for the Environmental Protection Agency) was the organization arguing to exempt these polluters from the act.  Generally, when trying to protect the air, one does not allow pollutants to be released into those not-so-friendly-anymore skies.  Allowing polluters to slip through without adequate pollution controls seems to defeat the purpose of the act, not to mention the EPA’s self-proclaimed goal to protect the environment.

Third graders (and possibly some students climbing the lofty heights of higher education) practice Opposite Day. 

Government agencies, however, need to stick to their purpose.  What if Homeland Security neglected its calling and failed to respond to one of the largest national disasters in American history?  People would call Homeland Security on that failure, and demand that the good folks in HS do their job.  The EPA has a job to do as well, and it sure isn’t to destroy the environment.  The federal appeals court reminded the EPA on Friday to fulfill its duty, but it also sent a message to others.  To all those sources of pollution out there, the court affirmed the need to comply with the Clean Air Act.  But maybe--just maybe--this case contains a lesson for everyone, not just the hypocritical EPA and polluting plants across America.  Everyone knows we need to protect the environment . . . and yet we are all guilty of damaging it.

So, next time you go outside, think of all the factories and the plants that run off of fossil fuels and of all the chemical plants dotting the mid-Ohio valley.  Then take a deep breath of that beautiful, noxious air.