All cost and no benefit, smog rule pulled

On the Friday before Labor Day, a moment he hoped his green constituency would be too busy celebrating the workers of the world to hear the news, President Obama withdrew drafted rules intended to cut smog levels.

The regulation would have limited ground-level ozone to between 60 and 70 parts per billion. That’s down from the 75 parts per billion, which was good enough in March 2008, when the Bush administration last set new ozone rules, and the 80 parts per billion set by the Clinton White House.

The green lobby pretends the environmental rules it peddles don’t hurt the economy. Yet we have an implicit admission from a president tied to that lobby that the economic benefits of scuttling a regulation are greater than the regulation’s ecological benefits.

Obama said he set aside proposed Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards in the interest “of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.”

The smog rule was one of seven new regulations the White House acknowledges would cost more than $1 billion each year. This particular regulation is projected to cost from $19 billion to as much as $90 billion a year. (IBD)

Obama shelves EPA smog rule in huge defeat for environmental groups
By Ben Geman and Erik Wasson

The White House announced Friday that it is shelving a major planned Environmental Protection Agency regulation that would have tightened smog standards, dealing a huge blow to environmentalists that had pushed the Obama administration to resist industry pressure to abandon the regulation.

In a statement, President Obama said that the rule is being shelved because he is wary of imposing regulatory burdens during the economic recovery.

The decision follows immense pressure from industry groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, that had lobbied hard against the EPA decision to tighten Bush-era ozone standards.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the top regulatory official for the administration said Obama “does not support finalizing the [smog] rule at this time.” (E2 Wire)