Opponents of the Clear Skies act from the environmental left would rather spend years in court paying herds of lawyers instead of supporting efforts to clean the nation’s air right now. They falsely claim that more emissions reductions would be achieved if existing Clean Air Act provisions were simply followed and that Clear Skies is a rollback of the existing provisions in the Clean Air Act. The basis for this misleading attack is an internal proposal and scenario that was developed by EPA officials, who have publicly declared that the proposal and scenario were not based in reality and were taken to the extreme as a negotiating tool.

 

FACTS: Clear Skies’ benefits are real and the country will start seeing them soon, beginning in just three years. Clear Skies is better than doing nothing because its benefits are certain to be enacted and emissions are certain to be reduced.

 

Clear Skies is significantly better for the environment than the existing Clean Air Act because it provides environmental certainty that NOx, SO2, and mercury will be reduced by 70% by 2018. Power plants will reduce their emissions and air quality will improve. Unlike efforts to reduce emissions by rulemaking, when Clear Skies is enacted into law it cannot be held up or derailed by litigation. Clear Skies is modeled after the national cap-and-trade Acid Rain Program, which is our nation’s most successful clean air initiative – reducing pollution faster and less costly than ever before.

 

Cleaner Air Quicker:

In 2008 nitrogen oxide will be required to be reduced by about 59 percent.

In 2010 sulfur dioxide will be required to be reduced by more than 50 percent.

In 2010 mercury will be required to be reduced by about 29 percent.

 

These levels will be required to be reduced further by 2018—to below 2000 levels:

Sulfur dioxide will be reduced by 73 percent by 2018.

Nitrogen oxide will be reduced by 67 percent in 2018.

Mercury will be reduced by 69 percent in 2018.