Price on Life
Recently, the EPA passed a new regulation for the annual permitted pollution levels of PM2.5 particles from 12 parts per million (ppm) to 9ppm. These are particles that are 2.5 micrometers wide or less, invisible to the human eye and approximately 30 times smaller than the width of an average human hair.[1] PM2.5 particles come from a variety of sources, including many natural ones getting significantly worse with climate change, like dust, wildfires, and volcanoes, but also from human activity such as fuel combustion from cars and power plants, construction, demolition, and chemical reactions from power plants with the environment.[2] This size of particle is particularly harmful, because it bypasses natural protection systems within our bodies that prevent larger particles from entering our respiratory system and eventually entering our bloodstream, causing cardiovascular issues, nervous system issues, and cancer[3] Thousands of studies from research compiled in 2019 for Particulate Matter for the Integrated Science Assessment [ISA] supported these probable relationships with exposure to particulate matter.[4] The EPA also states that it will modify “air quality monitoring networks” to better understand environmental injustice, change air quality indexes, and improve quality of monitoring data.[5] These new standards bring critics, both old and new, forcing us to reconsider the price of nature and ultimately the price of life.
The EPA is given jurisdiction and is required by the Clean Air Act, enacted in 1970 to protect the health and safety of citizens by creating the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), which contain primary and secondary standards.[6] Primary standards ensure “protection of public health” with an “adequate margin of safety”.[7] Secondary standards ensure the protection of public welfare such as agricultural damage, property damage, and haze. The EPA must review those standards every five years to ensure that current regulations follow those standards.[8] Both secondary and primary standards are regulated by 24 hour and annual permitted pollution levels. The EPA changed only the primary annual standard, deciding against changes to the 24 hour standard despite pushback from critical environmentalists and environmental justice activists who claim that the 24 hour standards have a greater impact on marginalized and often less wealthy communities.[9] However, air quality in general disproportionately affects marginalized groups, with Black and Hispanic populations as well as less wealthy populations with higher PM2.5 exposures than white populations and wealthier populations respectively. Such findings have been substantially recorded in the 2019 ISA report.
Environmental activists also state that the updated regulation was way overdue, with the last revision happening in 2012 pushing permitted ppm levels from 15 to 12, and with the Trump administration shying away from pushing any sort of revisions. Critics of the bill from the other end of the spectrum, claim that the move will create significant job loss and harm the United State’s energy sector. The EPA cannot consider costs as a factor for revisions in the air quality standards, but it has put out several number estimates. They state that the new standards by 2032 could account for $43 billion in savings, saving 4,200 premature deaths, eliminating 270,000 missed workdays, and creating an estimated $590 million in compliance costs.[1]0 Critics state that more constrictive regulations can cause shifts in industry, pushing industry overseas and restricting domestic industry expansion.[11] However, the EPA estimates that 99% of counties in the US will be in compliance with the new regulations in 2032, which will be the first year that states would need to be in compliance. Furthermore, according to 2020-2022 air quality data, 96% of US counties are already in compliance with the new standards.[12] These critics argue that stricter standards will destabilize the energy economy and major disruptions across American families, calling it a war on fossil fuels that are essential to our country’s functionality. Ironically, fossil fuel production in the US has skyrocketed in the last few years, although kept relatively quiet due to conflicting strong environmentalist support for the Biden administration.[13]
Ultimately, this calls into frame the broader problem with our neoclassical view of the world. We attempt to label everything with a price. When a good has a price, it is classified as scarce, therefore eliminating buyers underneath the price creating laws of supply and demand, giving a changing economic value to a good. When it comes to environmental goods, it is extremely difficult to form a price. Can you put a price on the psychological benefits that humans get from greenspaces, flowers, or wildlife?[14] Sure, clean air prices are indirectly factored into living costs and developments of parks and greenspaces, but too far removed to be properly measured. How much are you willing to pay for clean air? Is it even possible to put a price on that, when one can’t directly control if they get clean air or not? Clean air is not a given in any location, any sort of unexpected event can cause higher than average air pollution.
In the case of human safety and health, how valuable is a human life? Can a price ever be put on a human life? This is essentially what we are doing. Organizations compare the costs of a new regulation with the benefits. A classic cost/benefit analysis that is so central to our modern rational thinking. Yet, if we can’t accurately measure the benefits, then a cost/benefit analysis won’t produce comparable results. Is it ethical to let people die prematurely of pollution because the cost of regulation is too great? And if that is ethical, or it is simply a fact we must accept, then how many deaths and illnesses become too many? Should we simply count those deaths as losses of economic productivity and compare those with losses of economic productivity due to more constringent regulation? Or is that too grotesque of a calculation to make?
These are all questions that challenge our way of thinking about the environmental crisis. First and foremost, comes human health. Support for fellow human welfare garners more support than strictly environmental causes. Companies have always exploited natural resources for profit gain, a common economic process especially for a developing economy, that can eventually take tolls on ecosystems which leads to regulation. But surely industry exploitation of human life for profit is equally if not more severe and should be treated as such. Climate change and pollution is an environmental and an economics problem, but also a people problem. Economic cost and benefit analyses show us only a sliver of the solutions. People argue for economic policies based on democratic ethics and thus restrict trade from China or Russia. Why not argue for economic policies based on environmental and welfare ethics?
[1] Particulate Matter (PM) Basics | US EPA
[2] Particulate Matter (PM) Basics | US EPA
[3] PM NAAQS 2022 - Standards - Fact Sheet.pdf (epa.gov)
[4] PM NAAQS 2022 - Standards - Fact Sheet.pdf (epa.gov)
[5] PM NAAQS 2022 - Standards - Fact Sheet.pdf (epa.gov)
[9] New EPA Air Quality Guidelines A Step Forward, Experts Claim (forbes.com)
[10] PM NAAQS 2022 - Standards - Fact Sheet.pdf (epa.gov)
[11] Biden's New EPA Rule Will Only Make Global Air Quality Worse | Opinion (msn.com)
[12] EPA Data, 119 counties out of compliance, 3142 total counties
[13] Biden’s Energy Balancing Act - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
[14] Nurtured by nature (apa.org)
Note from Author: All putside sources used in the writing of this article are footnoted in numbers throughout this article in this form:[#] as well as right above.