Utopian consequences

The EPA: 40 and past its prime

The Environmental Protection Agency is marking its 40th birthday, but its record gives little cause to celebrate

Touting the 40th birthday of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this month, its head, Lisa Jackson, penned a paean to the agency in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. But it contained far more than a recapitulation of her agency's supposed achievements or a defense against its critics.

In fact, it began in a way that, for the top executive of a government regulatory agency, was jarringly political – namely, with a pointed reference to November's elections having "strengthened the influence of groups and individuals who threaten to roll back the EPA's efforts". Jackson's article was filled with specious assertions and was devoid of any acknowledgement that regulation has costs, direct and indirect, and that the challenge for regulators is to strive for the amount of oversight and intrusion that is necessary and sufficient.

Jackson lauds the EPA's protecting the public from chemical pesticides. In fact, this is one of the agency's bêtes noirs. The testing required is excessively burdensome and the tolerances permitted by regulators overly conservative (low). What makes regulators' approach to chemical pesticides verge on the absurd is the fact that 99.99% of consumers' exposure to pesticides comes not from agricultural applications, but from substances that are naturally found in food.

EPA and the "environmentalists" to whom it continually panders regularly muddle the public with specious warnings about impending risk. One such alarm concerns the presence of trace amounts of certain chemicals that are present in our bodies. Activists perform "studies" that search for trace amounts of a variety of chemicals in blood or tissues – and find them. But given the sophistication and sensitivity of our modern analytical techniques, we can find infinitesimal amounts of almost anything we look for.

The mere presence of a synthetic chemical – even one known to be toxic at high levels – does not make it a health concern. Consider, for example, the potent toxin of the potentially lethal food-poisoning bacterium that causes botulism: in tiny amounts, the toxin is a useful pharmaceutical and cosmetic; its brand name is Botox.

The EPA's repeated failures should not come as a surprise, because the agency has long been a haven for scientifically insupportable policies perpetrated by anti-technology ideologues. Jackson herself is a veteran of 16 years at the agency, developing some of its unscientific, wasteful and dangerous regulations. She worked on Superfund (officially, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act), an ongoing EPA programme intended to clean up and reduce the risk of toxic-waste sites. It was originally conceived as a short-term project – $1.6bn over five years, to clean up some 400 sites (by law, at least one per state and, not coincidentally, about one per congressional district). But it has grown into one of the nation's largest public works projects: more than $30bn spent, on about 1,300 sites.

How could cleaning up toxic waste sites not be a good thing? Well, various studies have attempted to evaluate the impacts of Superfund's massive and costly cleanups, but the results are equivocal. Putting that another way, after the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars, no beneficial results have been demonstrable.

On the other hand, some Superfund projects have definitely caused harm. University of California economics professor J Paul Leigh has analysed the occupational hazards of environmental cleanup projects and concluded that the risk of fatality to the average cleanup worker – a dump-truck driver involved in a collision or a labourer run over by a bulldozer, for example – is considerably larger than the cancer risks to individual residents that might result from exposures to untreated sites.

EPA has a long history of failing to weigh costs and benefits or to make decisions based on science. In his book, Breaking the Vicious Circle, supreme court justice Steven Breyer cites the low cost-effectiveness of the EPA's ban of asbestos pipe, shingles, coating and paper, which the most optimistic estimates suggested would prevent seven or eight premature deaths over 13 years – at a cost of approximately $250m. Breyer observes that such EPA actions are damaging in two ways: by diverting valuable resources from other, more effective public healthcare measures and by removing asbestos from existing structures in ways that make fibers airborne and pose even greater risks to human health.

In her Wall Street Journal article, Jackson defends her agency against charges that it is a jobkiller or otherwise harmful to the economy. In fact, unscientific and obstructionist policies toward once-promising R&D areas, such as the use of genetically engineered bacteria to clean up toxic wastes (including oil spills) and kill insect pests, have caused academics and corporations to abandon entire sectors that could have created jobs and wealth.

Notwithstanding Jackson's claims to the contrary, many critics – this writer included – believe that the 40-year experiment with a freestanding Environmental Protection Agency has been a failure and that the agency should be abolished, its essential functions reassigned to other, less scientifically-challenged government organisations. Over the years, though, the EPA has, in effect, bought the loyalty of a cadre of scientists and advocacy organisations that will defend it. For the foreseeable future, then, American companies and consumers – even our natural environment – will bear the scars of bureaucratic ambition and incompetence.

Cost/benefit analysis is a concept beyond the environmentalist/leftist. Since they believe in utopianism the concept of trade offs is simple evil. All life is a compromise. But, not in their mind. In part, because it's a part of the anti business mantra. The process of manufacturing plastic requires the use of hazardous chemicals. But, plastics save lives as medical devices every day. The utopian left will always destroy the good in it's search for perfection. Bravo to The Guardian for printing this piece.