Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
It seems that you can’t go anywhere on the Internet and not read an attack on the EPA by a Republican member of Congress. The Hill; McClatchey Unfortunately, I was not surprised how many of the Republican Congressmen were attacking the EPA and its attempts to control and eliminate air pollution. However, I was surprised by how many of those Congressmen were physicians.
“What would you think if your physician told you, “Keep smoking because quitting would kill tobacco and health care jobs.” Or, “Don’t take your high blood pressure medicine, you can’t afford it.” And, “Don’t lose weight, no one has proven obesity is bad for you.” That’s exactly the quality of medical advice we are getting from the 18 Republican physicians currently serving in Congress. Some of the most well known are the father and son team of Rep. Ron Paul and Sen. Rand Paul, and Sen. Tom Coburn. Almost all of these physician/Congressmen have been key soldiers in the Republican war on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), calling it a “job killer,” pronouncing relevant health science “unproven,” claiming we “can’t afford” their regulations.” Truthout
The “unproven” science that claims that air pollution is deadly comes from over 2,000 medical studies is significant in its numbers and content. “In the last ten years, over 2,000 scientific studies published in the mainstream medical literature have revealed that air pollution has much of the same physiologic and disease consequence as first- and second-hand cigarette smoke.(1, 2) Those studies show that just as there is no safe number of cigarettes a person can smoke, there is no safe level of air pollution a person can breathe. Even pollution at “background” levels still causes health consequences, including increased mortality rates.(3, 4)” Dr. Brian Moench
Dr. Moench’s Truthout article provides a plethora of citations to studies that confirm the need for and importance of taking the steps that the EPA has outlined in its August, 2010 report titled, “The Benefits and Costs of the Clean Air Act, 1990-2020”. EPA I guess some people can deny the science behind the studies and the EPA report. We have seen the climate change deniers put ear plugs in their ears when legitimate and voluminous studies are presented. Maybe I am naive, but I cannot understand how medical doctors can claim that we can’t afford the regulations needed to save lives of adults and children.
Over 1,800 medical doctors, nurses and health care professionals signed a letter to Congress imploring the Congressional members to honor the original intent of the Clean Air Act and allow science to trump politics by implementing the needed regulations to save lives. “The result is saved lives and improved quality of life for millions of Americans. But the job is not finished. Communities across the nation still suffer from poor air quality. Low income families face the impacts of toxic air pollution every day. From smog causing asthma attacks to toxic mercury harming children’s neurological development, far too many people face a constant threat from the air they breathe and the impacts of climate change. Please fulfill the promise of clean, healthy air for all Americans to breathe. Support full implementation of the Clean Air Act and resist any efforts to weaken, delay or block progress toward a healthier future for all Americans.” Lung.org
As someone who has Asthma, this fight to allow for the full implementation of the Clean Air Act has special meaning. I can only hope that Congress, including the Doctors who are in Congress will hear the call to do whatever is necessary to save lives. Politics should never get in the way of common sense and achievable changes and improvements in the air that we breathe.
Do you believe in the science behind the Clean Air Act and if not, where is the science to refute the claims of over 2,000 studies from all over the globe? Is there any health issue that can trump the vitriolic politics of our time? As quoted above, the original Clean Air Act and its amendments enjoyed bipartisan support. Why can’t that same bipartisan support be found for the full implementation of the Clean Air Act knowing it will save lives and create jobs? How many more must die or suffer before political gain is put aside?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/02/15/exxon-replacing-oil-with-gas-for-now/ Big oil is even moving into natural gas.
http://www.chron.com/business/article/Shift-to-natural-gas-coming-for-U-S-Kinder-2708269.php The shift from oil and coal to natural gas is well underway. It is cleaner but has other issues like fracking.
The congress is at a low ebb as planned.
The U.S. military is seen as the most competent institution in American society. For decades now.
Yet, the military produces nothing. No products, no goods, no civil services. They are massive consumers who receive taxpayer money as entitlements. It is not paid back.
They then use the taxpayer’s treasury to hire corporations to build instruments of destruction, WMD of every imaginable expense and type.
Then they must find a place to test it. Millions are dead over the past 50 years proving that those weapons do work. More, more, more, they chant, and the military budget has increased 80% since Bush II.
For some unknown, mystical, unfathomable reason there have also been more, longer wars as the war budget increases. Doesn’t war bring peace?
Yet we all have a mystical, magnetic feeling that draws us to be the universal Smedley.
Historically, our government structure expressed in our constitution is a good idea, a great idea. It includes congress. It includes courts. It includes a president.
When we made that constitution, we did not have a permanent military, spread around the entire world, at thousands of bases in 132 countries, nor hundreds of bases here. Good things happen without military excess disease. They are not a democratic institution, and they are not competent at the American Constitutional Form of Government.
They are composed of order givers and order takers.
The cries to nuke the Deepwater Horizon oil pollution catastrophe, in the Gulf of Mexico, expresses the mystical, mythical belief that the military is the most competent institution in the Amercan way of life.
rafflaw wrote:
The other side of that story is that the Democrats give in to the mindless mantra of the Republicans, from Obama on down to House members.
Myth reigns supreme. For real.
idealist707 1, March 11, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Hopefully Mike and others will see and look at this man’s message.
He’s only a world reknown Swedish Professor of Public Health.
Google has bought his data display system, it’s available free of charge on the net.
Look at this, dammit. This man will amaze you with what he show you is hiding in world statistics—-largely due to US paying for the data collection of some types.
Only 20 minutes. Try it, you’ll be glad you did, all of you.
===========================================
Good video.
Mindset = Mindswamp.
The compliments the professor gives us is what I want our country to be known for. Helping out in the neighborhood, the world.
I do not want us to be known for the destruction of nations on account of our addiction to oil, nor that we don’t care to shake the habit.
One does not excuse the other.
AY,
Hah! You are right!
OS,
I am with you in spirits on that one….. Time does make easier what we do next term understand while we’re here….
Raff,
Your going to law school only confirmed what was only thought…..I am funna ya….
Great description OS. I think the good Benedictine Nuns thought my mind was full of rubbish back in grade school. They probably were right! 🙂
raff, you know it! We have a couple of them here every day, so you know that Eric Hoffer was right. He observed that the reason it is so difficult to get information into an empty mind was because the empty mind is not really empty, but stuffed with rubbish.
OS,
Sounds like an uphill battle!
How do we fight it? Get the slobs out of office. When loyalty to an out of touch political party is more important than the responsibility of the office, then it is time to fire them. The only problem is that much of the constituency has drunk the Kool Aid and will not be swayed by logic, science or moral ethics. The sleazy leading the willfully ignorant. Until we fix that, they will continue to prevail.
You are right OS. Scary, but it seems to be true. How do we change it?
My congresscritter is an MD. I get these gawdawful emails from him asking me to help him fight for teh stuoopid.
Party comes before science, medical ethics, and common sense.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/
da man
yo, it is simple, there concern ain’t climate, it’s human health and protection of you know
If you got a link giving another mission statement, do tell…..
Hello earth to 1do7o7 CO2 emissions from the burning of foossil fuels
Raff,
Seeing the question repeated makes me worried about bdaman and traffic accidents…… You know they are out there but some just have to gwak……
Bdaman,
I forgot to answer your question about the unofficial Rafflaw. I don’t think anything has been decided. It is Prof. Turley’s call.
Here’s an opinion: EPA is a dog on a leash (sorry TD). And we know who’s at the other end of the leash. Chronic emitters of all kinds.
And it ain’t go nuttin to do wid climate problems—so go to sleep Bdaman.
I understand Bdaman, but we are talking air pollution that cause health issues in this thread.
I was merely trying to steer him to the issue at hand.
Raff I took a quote from your post
” We have seen the climate change deniers put ear plugs in their ears when legitimate and voluminous studies are presented.”
and seized upon it. The EPA has there hand in climate change regulations. They couldn’t pass cap and trade but that doesn’t mean they can’t run an end around.