Most Americans breath dirty air — in many places, levels of pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and ozone are in violation of federal air quality standards. And now, those standards are getting even stronger, which will put even more of the country out of compliance: EPA recently upped standards for nitrogen dioxide and is working on strengthening limits for other pollutants. But to make real improvements in air quality without breaking the bank, what is called for is not another round of top-down regulation, but an update of the Clean Air Act to allow strong market-based solutions.
Progress on cleaning our nation’s air pollution has slowed because of the Clean Air Act’s structure. The law was adopted in 1970 and hasn’t been updated since 1990. It worked well in the past when there was plenty of low hanging fruit-cheap reductions that achieved big benefits. But now its format, which relies on each state to create detailed plans to meet national air quality goals, has become unbearably cumbersome.
The state plans must specify who cuts emissions and how much, but to decide that local regulators need to understand the... Read more
