Before the House of Representatives takes a two-month recess, its final votes focuses on a Republican package of pro-coal bills, which dismantle essential water, air, and climate protections.

The White House has threatened to veto the package for its “harmful measures that would undermine landmark environmental laws and adversely affect public health, the economy, and the environment.”

Coal has backed the GOP’s political campaign with heavy spending on TV ads, lobbying and political contributions. Coal and dirty utilities have spent a total $66 million on lobbying since 2011. House Republicans have received $4.4 million in career contributions from the coal industry — nearly 5 times the amount Democratic members received, according to a ThinkProgress analysis of Center for Responsive Politics data.

In 2012 alone, Republicans received 89 percent of the coal industry’s campaign contributions. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chair of the Energy and Commerce committee, has received $60,000 from both major utilities and the coal industry. Another sponsor, Rep. David McKinley (R-WV), is the top recipient of coal cash for 2012, receiving over $200,000.

The coal industry has also waged a separate “public awareness” campaign on pro-coal TV ads. The American Coalition For Clean Coal Electricity has so far spent $12 million of its promised $40 million election-year budget on ads this cycle. So far, total fossil fuel spending has exceeded $153 million.

Backed by a pile of corporate polluter cash, House Republicans and the Romney campaign have rallied around the myth that the administration is waging a “war on coal.” Instead of focusing on the slew of bills needing action, the GOP has waged a messaging campaign to oppose safeguards for public health against air pollution.

The GOP’s campaign is a giveaway to big polluters. It’s a plan that does nothing to moving energy policy forward — only threatening public health:

– It undermines clean air, clean water protections The package blocks EPA greenhouse gas regulation, prevents the EPA from regulating mercury, arsenic, smog, and coal ash from power plants. One bill repeals mercury standards that prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths, 5,000 heart attacks, 130,000 asthma attacks, and 5,700 hospital visits annually. The legislation also threatens water quality by stripping the Department of Interior’s and EPA’s strip mining regulation and protections in the Clean Water Act.

– Selectively edits out health concerns, science: Ignoring overwhelming scientific consensus, H.R. 910 declares that carbon pollution is not a danger to health and the climate. In the latest version of legislation blocking EPA carbon pollution standards, the House Energy and Power Subcommittee deleted a mild climate change mention, which said the U.S. plays a role “in resolving global climate change matters on an international basis.” On Thursday, the Energy and Commerce Committee heard from a hearing witness that carbon pollution is good for the environment, because it is “plant food.”

–Public health standards will create jobs: A spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R) calls the package “jobs legislation.” But the same health standards Republicans oppose create tens of thousands more jobs in the manufacturing, installation, and maintenance of modern pollution reduction equipment. EPA protections against mercury would create a net 84,500 jobs by 2015, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, coal mining jobs in West Virginia reached a two-decade record in 2011. In Pennsylvania and Virginia, data shows a 2.3 percent increase and 6.7 percent increase in coal mining employment from 2009 to 2010.

The GOP’s effort could end up hurting the coal industry more by opposing technology that reduce the industry’s carbon pollution so it complies with the Clean Air Act. For instance, McKinley’s bill would prevent the EPA from reducing carbon pollution from power plants — the largest uncontrolled source — until the pollution control technology is economical. But that will never happen without a market for it, which requires some sort of pollution reduction regime.

– Makes U.S. more dependent on foreign oil: H.R. 3409 blocks new fuel economy standards that will save the U.S. 3 million barrels of oil daily and creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. These standards will reduce U.S. oil use, so blocking them will maintain our demand for foreign oil. The standards would also save the average driver a net of $4,400 on lower gasoline purchases over the life of a 2025 car.

With this package, House Republicans will add to their 302 votes against the environment, including 87 efforts to dismantle the Clean Air Act, 34 against the Clean Water Act, and 128 against pollution measures.

Today, the Senate votes on Sen. James Inhofe’s measure to derail the first Environmental Protection Agency regulation to reduce mercury pollution and other toxics. The EPA projects the new standard will prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths. The push by the coal industry’s GOP allies isn’t likely to move forward, however, with a White House veto threat on the table.

Mitt Romney’s campaign has once again drawn where the candidate stands on reducing mercury pollution, and it doesn’t happen to be on the side of most Americans. Though a majority of Americans support the standard, Romney and other Republicans have argued on behalf of the coal industry, which has lobbied aggressively against the EPA. Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul told the National Journal:

“Governor Romney has made clear that he opposes the Utility MACT…. President Obama cannot claim to support clean coal while imposing regulations that his EPA admits would prevent another coal plant from ever being built.”

Romney’s position reversal is the latest example of the candidate’s etch-a-sketch transformation. As governor, Romney said pollution is akin to “killing people,” and Massachusetts joined several states to sue the EPA for the very regulations Inhofe wants to derail.

In 2003, Romney unveiled regulations that would require older power plants to reduce mercury pollution, “putting Msssachusstetts in the forefront of reducing air pollution.” The state’s Department of Environmental Protection proposed its own mercury standard, to capture 95 percent of the mercury by October 2012. At the time Romney touted, “Our comprehensive mercury reduction efforts are a major step towards eliminating mercury pollution and will have a positive effect on the environment and public health for many years,” according to a press release from Romney’s office.

Romney and the 35 dirty Senators backing Inhofe’s push are out of step with public opinion. A new United Technologies/National Journal poll finds that 57 percent of Americans support the EPA’s finalized rule. The rule draws broad bipartisan support in the poll, as well, with 57 percent of Republicans in support of the rule with more time to comply.

Here’s the pre-Etch-A-Sketch Romney standing in front of a Massachusetts coal-fired power plant, explaining that he would “not create jobs or hold jobs that kill people”:

by John Walke, via NRDC’s Switchboard

The Senate soon will take up a bill that represents an irresponsible attack on Americans’ right to clean, healthy air. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) is expected to call for a vote in the next week on a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution (S.J. 37, pdf) to eliminate EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants. These standards are projected to avoid up to 11,000 premature deaths, 130,000 asthma attacks, and 5,000 non-fatal heart attacks every year. Senator Inhofe’s action is the legislative equivalent of an atomic bomb, destroying these health standards with a radioactive spillover that would prevent EPA from adopting meaningful replacement standards to protect Americans from mercury and some 80 other toxic air pollutants that cause cancer and other health hazards.

In light of this reckless action, perhaps it should come as no surprise that the rhetoric and arguments wielded by critics are just as sharp and reckless. Many of these statements by congressional and industry naysayers reveal a startling degree of disdain for life-saving limits on air pollution and health standards to protect Americans, including vulnerable children and the unborn.

So in their own words, here are some of the more outlandish statements from congressional opponents and industry lobbyists attacking the mercury and air toxics standards and their health benefits:

• In response to concerns by pro-life evangelical Christians that part of being pro-life means protecting the unborn from the brain and nerve damage caused by neurotoxic mercury pollution, Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) retorted that “[t]he life in pro-life denotes not quality of life but life itself.”
• The conservative Cornwall Alliance defended its opposition to these clean air standards and other health safeguards by declaring that “most environmental causes promoted as pro-life involve little threat to human life itself, and no intent to kill anyone.”
• The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), has weighed in on the mercury and air toxics standards that annually will prevent [pdf] up to 11,000 premature deaths, 130,000 asthma attacks and 5,000 non-fatal heart attacks. Speaker Boehner’s contribution to the debate? Calling these health standards “red tape.”
• Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), while noting helpfully that he was not a “medical doctor,” nonetheless asserted at a congressional hearing that there was no “medical negative” to mercury and soot pollution. He went on to claim that EPA’s numbers on premature deaths that the mercury and air toxics standards helped avoid were “pulled out of the thin air.” Unsurprisingly, real doctors at the American Lung Association, American Public Health Association and American Academy of Pediatrics wrote Barton expressing that they “were shocked at such statements.” [pdf]. These actual doctors responded to Barton’s outrageous statements as “professionals that treat patients who are impacted by lung, cardiovascular and neurological impairments” linked to air pollution. These doctors “see in the patients we treat what [] the scientific literature lets us know to expect: that air pollution makes people sick and cuts lives short.”
• The House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment held a hearing where the Republican majority chose as its only medical witness the Chief Toxicologist for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Downplaying the well-understood health impacts of soot pollution, this Texas official took the tack of arguing [pdf] that “[s]ome studies even suggest PM [particulate matter] makes you live longer.” This flies in the face of long-established scientific understanding and a multitude of per-review studies. (See here [pdf] and the attachment identifying dozens of these studies.)

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Swanksalot, via Flickr

by Thom Cmar, via NRDC’s Switchboard

This week we released a report, Poisoning the Great Lakes: Mercury Emissions from Coal Fired Power Plants in the Great Lakes Region, which highlights the impacts of mercury emissions from Great Lakes power plants on the people, fish, birds, and wildlife of our region.  EPA recently issued new nationwide Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that require power plants to cut their mercury emissions by 90% on average, as well as to make similar cuts to their emissions of arsenic, lead, acid gases, and other toxic air pollution.

Our report focuses on the 144 coal-fired power plants in the Great Lakes region, and names the 25 worst emitters, which were responsible for putting over 7,000 pounds of mercury into the air in 2010.  Mercury emissions from power plants in the Great Lakes region account for close to 25% of the nation’s mercury emissions total.  Mercury is so highly toxic that exposure to even very small amounts in fish has serious implications for public health, and especially our children’s health.  And mercury fish consumption advisories depress the Great Lakes’ multi-billion dollar fishing economy.

Mercury is a dangerous brain poison that doesn’t belong in our Great Lakes. It puts the health of kids and pregnant women at risk and adds an unwelcome danger to eating what our fishermen catch. That’s why it is so important that we support the EPA’s standards to reduce mercury pollution by holding polluters accountable.  Even more critical is that every single US Senator from the region stand up for the Lakes by rejecting reckless attempts to derail the long overdue Clean Air Act updates that can help tame this problem.

EPA’s authority to adopt these critical safeguards goes back to 1990, when the first President Bush signed amendments to the Clean Air Act that were passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress and directed EPA to set standards on major sources such as power plants.   But now, twenty-two years later, Congress is seeking to roll back these and other basic provisions of the Clean Air and Clean Water Act that have protected our health and environment for decades.

Next week we expect that there will be a vote in the U.S. Senate on a resolution that would void EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and permanently block EPA from re-issuing similar safeguards.  At stake in this vote are the thousands of lives that would be saved every year by the EPA standards and the hundreds of thousands of avoided respiratory illnesses and lost work days.

Many power companies support EPA’s standards, along with doctors, nurses, scientists, and public health professionals.  We have all known for years that these standards were imminent, and many companies have already invested millions to reduce their mercury and toxic air emissions.  Meanwhile, other industries have worked hard to clean up their own pollution.  Rolling back EPA’s power plant standards now would unfairly penalize companies that have invested money to modernize their plants, while granting amnesty to the laggards that disregarded the law and kept polluting and harming our children’s health.  Many of the plants have been operating for decades without modern pollution controls.  It’s long overdue for these polluters to clean up their act and stop demanding that we subsidize their plants with our lungs.

Thom Cmar is an attorney at the National Resources Defense Council. This piece was originally published at Switchboard and is reprinted with permission.

The Environment Protection Agency’s landmark mercury and air toxics standards, announced in December, would reduce pollutants from coal power plants, saving 11,000 lives, prevent 130,000 asthma attacks and avoid 4,700 heart attacks. But Sen. James Inhofe has found the required 30 Senators to bring the rule to a Senate vote.

In an event with FreedomWorks, a participant posed the question to Inhofe (at 27:00): “Can we really trust companies to protect our natural resources without the institution of the EPA?” Inhofe, a climate denier who has attempted to circumvent EPA rules because they lack “science,” did not think anyone has said the EPA doesn’t have a place:

INHOFE: I don’t think anyone has said you want to eliminate the EPA altogether. If you look at the Clean Air regulations they were good. They worked. If you look back to the Bush administration we had the clear skies act that they refused to act on that would have done away with SO2, NOx, mercury, real pollutants. We’re not talking about that. There needs to be some regulation there but the regulation needs to be based on science and theirs is not based on science.

But Inhofe really doesn’t need to look far to find many Republicans who want to “abolish” the EPA. Last year, ThinkProgress spoke to six current and recent GOP lawmakers aiming to end the agency, and Senate Republicans voted to end the EPA by combining it with the Department of Energy, with 15 GOP co-sponsors. And Rep. Stephen Fincher recently said “We must cut the EPA’s legs off.”

And of course, Inhofe has attempted to block coal and oil oversight — the climate denier has claimed there’s no science for it. However, Inhofe’s interests do not lie with the hundreds of thousands of Americans who would benefit from mercury reduction, but with his oil and coal donors.

by Celine Ramstein

There was more huffing and puffing on Capitol Hill this week over the Environmental Protection Agency’s new mercury standards.

Once again, lawmakers are attacking the EPA’s plan to regulate mercury from power plants, creating a false dichotomy between the economy and public health.

Railing against the standard during a Senate subcommittee hearing on the health benefits of the standard, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) called it “the most costly rule in the history of the EPA; one that typifies President Obama’s war on affordable energy.”

As one of the fiercest opponents of environmental regulations, it’s not a surprise that Inhofe counts oil, gas and electric utilities among his top five political donors — receiving over $600,000 in campaign contributions from those sectors since 2007.

Perhaps that’s why, despite analysis from the Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Congressional Research Service, and the North American Reliability Corporation showing that the EPA rule will not threaten the electricity system, opponents like Inhofe continue to make grossly inaccurate claims.

So what are the facts? We’ve detailed them numerous times before. But the attacks on smart, effective environmental and public health standards are only picking up. It’s important to be armed with good information in order to combat the attacks:

• A CAP Analysis found that 22 members of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry coalition which is leading the charge against the rule, has nearly $18 billion in cash reserve which could go towards scrubbers and other equipment necessary to slash these pollutants.
• The Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, Congressional Research Service, and the North American Reliability Corporation have all done analysis showing that the rule will not threaten Americans’ access to reliable electricity.
• Studies by the Center for American Progress and Ceres found that many of the plants already have the capability to meet the air toxics rule.
• The EPA concluded that increase in electricity price increase would be relatively small and would actually  account for the harmful costs of pollution on the public.
• The Economic Policy Institute determined that the rules would yield a net increase of  84,500 direct jobs by 2015.
• The rules go into effect in 2015 and the utility Exelon has testified that three years is enough time to implement pollution control technology.
• EPA also makes a fourth year option widely available.
• Opponents’ predictions of high costs are likely overblown.  History shows that estimates of reductions costs under earlier pollution laws  are always higher than the actual costs.  For instance, In 1989, the EPA calculated that complying with the acid rain program would cost $2.7 billion to $4.0 billion but a decade later, an EPA analysis found that the actual cost was substantially lower at $1 to $2 billion per year.

History has proven that it is possible to maintain a strong economy and strong environmental standards at the same time. The political arguments we hear today simply don’t reflect reality.

Celine Ramstein is an intern on the energy team at the Center for American Progress. Arpita Bhattacharyya and Stephen Lacey contributed to this report.

The Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) recently began a major advertising and outreach campaign to advocate for various environmental regulations and has targeted Republican attempts to delay regulations on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. EEN specifically appealed to one of the GOP’s most fervent ideological positions, saying, “We believe protecting the unborn from mercury poisoning is a consistent pro-life position.”

Despite those attempts, “pro-life” lawmakers like Reps. Bill Johnson (R-OH) and Ed Whitfield have blasted the proposed regulation as “far-left liberal ideology.” And this week, more than 30 advocates from the religious right, led by notables like the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, slammed EEN for its attempts to protect the environment, the unborn, and any human who could be affected by poisonous mercury emissions:

The 30-plus religious-right advocates, in a joint statement Wednesday, said that “most environmental causes promoted as pro-life involve little threat to human life itself, and no intent to kill anyone.”

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) criticized the Rev. Mitch Hescox, EEN’s president, at Wednesday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the EPA rule, which Republicans and some business groups call burdensome.

“The ‘life’ in ‘pro-life’ denotes not the quality of life, but life itself. The term denotes opposition to a procedure that intentionally results in dead babies,” said Shimkus, echoing the statement from the conservative leaders.

The religious right’s “pro-life” stance may cover invasive procedures on women, preventing access to contraception, and a host of other injustices. What it doesn’t cover, apparently, is a regulation opposed by the GOP’s big-business interests that would keep infants and children from getting poisoned by the air they breathe.

Pro-pollution Sen. Inhofe aims to block life-saving standards

By Arpita Bhattacharyya and Daniel J. Weiss

Americans can celebrate a big step toward cleaner air and healthier communities today as the final  Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for power plants are published in the Federal Register.  This is a significant milestone for the life-saving Environmental Protection Agency rules that were announced on December 16, 2011.  However, these long overdue safeguards from the known neurotoxin mercury continue to face relentless attacks from coal heavy utilities, coal companies and their Congressional allies.  Today, Senator Inhofe (R-OK) filed a Congressional Review Act resolution to block the rule, just as it made it onto the Federal Register.

The Federal Register is the official publication for proposed and final rules.  Publication of the mercury rule begins the implementation process. The rule requires power plants to reduce mercury, lead, arsenic, acid gasses, and other toxic chemicals from their smokestacks.  The huge reduction in toxics would save 11,000 lives, prevent  130,000 asthma attacks  and avoid 4,700 heart attacks annually.   Such drastic health improvements would provide economic benefits of up to $90 billion every year.

Senator Inhofe disregards these important health benefits and calls on his colleagues to join him to “stop EPA’s destructive agenda” through a joint resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act.   The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to completely block rules it opposes.  It works like this:  Once the mercury rule is published in the Federal Register, legislators have sixty legislative days to introduce and vote on it.  According to the Library of Congress, a legislative day begins:

“when a house of Congress meets and ends when it adjourns…the Senate often does not adjourn at the end of a daily session, but instead  ‘recesses,’ so when the Senate next meets, it continues in the same legislative day. As a result, a legislative day in the Senate may extend over days, weeks, or even months.”

In addition, the resolution requires a simple majority of senators voting for it to pass – it cannot be blocked by a filibuster that requires 60 votes to end.

Albert A. Rizzo of the American Lung Association blasted Senator’s Inhofe’s attempt to block the standards, stating that “These safeguards have been delayed for far too long already.  The public cannot wait any longer for these life-saving clean air protections.”

Senator Inhofe will likely have the support of many utilities and coal companies that have ignored the health benefits.  Instead, they want to prevent, weaken or delay these vital safeguards, claiming that the cost of cleanup is simply too high.

The emitters claim that the rules will reduce electricity reliability, increase electricity prices, and increase unemployment.  Many also assert that they don’t have enough time to comply.  The Center for American Progress and other clean air defenders have proven these claims false time and time again.

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The Cornwall Alliance calls environmentalism "one of the greatest threats to society."

A conservative religious organization with ties to the oil industry is lashing out at health-conscious evangelical leaders for supporting new federal rules on mercury.  They assert that protection of the unborn from toxic pollution cannot be called pro-life because the term does not mean “quality of life.”

The Cornwall Alliance is a group of conservative evangelicals devoted to spreading disinformation about climate change through its mission of  “free-market environmental stewardship.” In its Declaration on Global Warming, the organization says “we deny that carbon dioxide … is a pollutant” and that “we deny that alternative, renewable fuels can … replace fossil and nuclear fuels.”

Think Progress conducted a lengthy investigation of this pollution-pushing evangelical group in 2010.

Responding to a new video and radio ad campaign from the Evangelical Environment Network that encourages lawmakers to support new mercury standards in order to “protect the unborn,” the Cornwall Alliance issued a statement explaining its view that being pro-life does not denote “quality of life.”

The term pro-life originated historically in the struggle to end abortion on demand and continues to be used in public discourse overwhelmingly in that sense. To ignore that is at best sloppy communication and at worst intentional deception. The life in pro-life denotes not quality of life but life itself. The term denotes opposition to a procedure that intentionally results in dead babies. (Bold not our emphasis.)

This doesn’t mean we should ignore environmental risks. It does mean they should not be portrayed as pro-life. Genuinely pro-life people will usually desire to reduce other risks as well—guided by cost/benefit analysis. But to call those issues “pro-life” is to obscure the meaning of the term.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the new mercury rules will prevent 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma attacks each year. And the impact of high levels of mercury in unborn children are well documented:

For fetuses, infants, and children, the primary health effect of methylmercury is impaired neurological development. Impacts on cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language, and fine motor and visual spatial skills have been seen in children exposed to methylmercury in the womb.

Outbreaks of methylmercury poisonings have made it clear that adults, children, and developing fetuses are at risk from ingestion exposure to methylmercury. During these poisoning outbreaks some mothers with no symptoms of nervous system damage gave birth to infants with severe disabilities, it became clear that the developing nervous system of the fetus may be more vulnerable to methylmercury than is the adult nervous system.

A growing number of religious leaders — including the U.S. Conference of Bishops — has come out in favor of reducing mercury emissions because of their impact on the health of children.

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