Does reducing pollution create more pollution? Does cutting emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and nitrogen oxide by 70 percent over the next 15 years mean more kids with asthma? How about more premature deaths? A reply of ‘yes’ would seem contradictory, nonsensical, or, to use a term much in vogue these days, especially in the context of the Bush Administration, ‘Orwellian.’ Yet such is the position of President Bush’s critics, who derisively refer to Clear Skies as something that would have made George Orwell shutter, or write 1984 all over again. Take Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), who on Fox News this past Sunday said the “Clear Skies Initiative becomes a program that actually pollutes the air more and gives more kids asthma.” It is even more iniquitous than that, for it also increases “the number of people who will die earlier than they otherwise would, particularly the elderly, of lung problems as a result of greater air pollution.” In sum, Lieberman argues, “to call it a ‘Clear Skies Initiative’ is, you know, the worst kind of misleading statement by the administration.”

FACT: President Bush’s critics are Orwellian, maintaining as they do that a mandatory 70 percent reduction in power plant emissions means more emissions, and more health problems. According to EPA, Clear Skies will result in 14,100 fewer premature deaths; 8,800 fewer cases of chronic bronchitis; 30,000 fewer hospitalizations for cardiovascular and respiratory symptoms; and 12.5 million fewer days with respiratory illnesses. Again, that’s fewer for each. Moreover, Clear Skies is predicated on the Acid Rain trading program, which passed as an amendment to the Clean Air Act in 1990, and has reduced sulfur dioxide emissions by 33 percent, with near full compliance. Why, even Sen. Lieberman agrees: “Air quality is improving because of the Clean Air Act and the amendments that were adopted under the first President Bush, which were very good amendments.”