Why Gutting the Clean Air Act Is a Bad Idea for West Virginia

Clean air shouldn't be a contentious issue: Everyone can rally around the fact that its nice to take a breath of air that hasn't been polluted with toxins and other harmful material.  Because having clean air to breathe is so important, our largest legislative body in America would be head-over-heels about protecting the air right?

Actually, some members of Congress—including and most especially West Virginia's own Jay Rockefeller—want to do the exact opposite.

Rockefeller, a Democrat, is one of the primary sponsors of efforts that would take a scalpel to the Clean Air Act and begin slicing and dicing the aspects that allow U.S. EPA to protect West Virginians from greenhouse gas pollution (West Virginia ranks near the top in the nation in terms of the intensity of its emissions). 

And Rockefeller isn't the only Congressional representative from West Virginia backing the maneuvering. West Virginia freshman Congressman David McKinely, in his recent grilling of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson over the existence of global warming ("Isn't global warming an issue that the scientists are still debating and you know it! I know it!"), voiced his clear approval for gutting the Clean Air Act.  The EPA and Congressmen from the Mountain State have had bad blood since the agency recent revoked the permit for the disastrous Spruce Mine No. 1—a project that would have been one of the largest mountaintop removal coal mines in Appalachia.

In this Congress, the Clean Air Act is under attack on many fronts, and climate change isn't the only issue at stake. The Environmental Defense Fund has a good rundown of all the pollutants—from mercury to dioxin to smog—we'd be increasingly exposed to if these collective attacks go through.

The EPA is upset with these maneuvers and rightly so, and for West Virginia and Appalachia citizens who care about their health, the negative repercussions of these Clean Air Act attacks as a whole is immense.  Breathing (relatively) clean air will slowly become a thing of the past, coal dust and smog will fill the lungs of morning commuters, and more environmental liabilities like the Spruce Mine No. 1 will be proposed and potentially even given the green light.

Lawmakers from West Virginia, and all of the others who are supporting this legislation, are digging themselves a hole that they will not be able to escape from. Limiting the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and stripping down important regulations in the Clean Air Act can have catastrophic consequences.

The Environmental Defense Fund is, as I write, busy on Capitol Hill rallying a defense against these attacks, and we need to make sure they have popular support. Help join the Environmental Defense Action Fund in telling Congress that we like our Clean Air and don't it taken away.  Sign this petition telling Congress: Don't Gut the Clean Air Act!

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Photo credit: PinkMoose via Flickr