The Clean Air Act’s Birthday Is Not Worth Celebrating

Nicolas Loris / September 15, 2010

Yesterday marked the 40th birthday of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Air Act (CAA), and environmentalists celebrated by reminding us how beneficial the regulation has been at improving air quality in the U.S. Now the EPA wants to turn the Clean Air Act’s birthday party into an all-out rager by allowing them to do what elected officials could not: regulate carbon dioxide (CO2).

First things first. Air quality was improving before the passage of the 1970 CAA. Environmentalists should give more credit to innovation and less to top-down regulation. The air quality improvements are attributable to the cost-saving, energy-efficiency gains made by business and industry that go hand-in-hand with environmental improvement. Engineer and environmental expert Indur Goklany explains: (more…)