The Issue of Pollution in the Manufacturing Industry of the United States - Essay Example

Week One Assignment The manufacturing industry in the USA is one of the biggest in the world and as a result it is a prominent contributor in the global air pollution that has ravaged the planet for the better of part of the last century. In 1990, President Bush signed the Clean Air Act of 1990 and is quoted saying in justification that every American deserves to breathe clean air (Schennach, 2000). The act tightened the federal air pollution standards first set in 1977 and it is described as one of the most significant piece of anti-pollution legislation in history of the country. The intention of the bill was to prevent factories from liberally spewing poisonous fumes by requiring that they either come up with mechanisms for scrubbing their waste fumes of using less pollutant fuels. Over the cause of the last two decades, the law has weighed in in reducing the amount of pollution as well as the urban smog that had threatened to overwhelm the country’s industrial metropolis. The 1990 amendment addressed various issues including, but not limited to Ozone depletion and emission from motor vehicles. One of the requirements of the laws was for car manufactures to use new auto gasoline that would have a set reid vapor pressure and with controlled evaporative emissions (Bryner, 1995). The clean air act requires those intending to build or add major sources of stationary pollution such as industrial factories to apply for a PDS permit; the primary objectives of the Prevention of Significant Deterioration permits (PSD) include preventing new non-attainment areas by promoting economic growth in harmony with clean air. They also protect public health and enhance the quality of air in national parks and other non-residential areas; the act provided for an acid deposition control. This was in recognition of the fact that most manufactures tended to release nitrogen and Sulfur dioxides from fossil fuel powered power plants, which would later turn in acid rain then, corrode structures, poison the soil and water. However, the 1990 act provides industries with options to control acid rain such as switching to low sulfur fuel or adding devices and components that control and reduce the levels of emissions (Zajac, 2014). In some cases, plants, which were found to be extreme in their levels of pollutants and acid rain components, were shut down for rehabilitation of even for good to prevent the gases from entering the atmosphere in the long term. Today, much of the legislation proposes by EPA and other environmental agencies to protect the United States from the impact of rampant pollution is founded on the 1990 act. Frances Beinecke, the chairperson of EPA recently claimed that the law has helped the organization do what it was designed to do which is to look out for the wellbeing of the national health and the environment. Ultimately, although it has not been a hundred percent effective, it has contributed a great deal to improving the quality of air in most industrial American cities and it continues to provide a basis for more adaptive laws. While admitting that the laws has proven to be effective, in light of the numerous adjustments being made based on it or on it, there is no doubt that it will have changed a significantly by in the not too distant future. Two opposing factions with mutually exclusive interest in the law would typically drive the changes that may occur to this piece of legislation. On one side there are the environmentalists that are would wish to make it more stringent and impose even harsher penalties to those who are found in breach of the requirements. In addition, this group will propose for the removal or at least minimization of the allowances for polluting the environment. For them companies should be made to come up with methods of production that do not just reduce but entirely eliminate the levels of pollution in the atmosphere such as using non pollutant energy or channeling their waste gasses underground. The fact that the law actually allows for new companies to get licenses to emit their waste gasses into the atmosphere no matter how controlled or limited is one most environmentalist are yet to agree with; as result there will likely be increased activism with the intention or contending clauses that allow this (Wooley, Moye & Francis, 2002). Nevertheless, the demand for industrial goods is fast growing and many American industries are outsourcing their production process to the east primarily China and India. However, the main motivation for this is not so much to reduce pollution although it is a secondary result, they do so to save on labor and production costs since it is cheaper to produce goods outside US and then import the finished product. At the end of the day, the American employment crisis and economic downturn will only be fixed if the level of home production increases which implies that more manufacturing will have to take place. In the long run, for America’s economy to recover the levels of production needs must be increased and given the fact that the most pollutant sources or energy and production techniques are still the most effective it appears that the laws it at odds with projections for growth. Therefore, it is likely that environmental groups will try to change the laws to make it more stringent while manufactures on the other hand may lobby for it to be more lenient to manufactures in order to promote production and ultimately revive up the economy. Taking to account the attitude of the current government in the last few years, is likely that the environmentalist side will carry the day. The corollary is that the industry will be forced to adopt new technologies for reducing pollution since with the anticipated growth even with the law in place it is inevitable that the levels of pollution will keep increasing albeit gradually. Therefore, in the short run the manufacturing industry will have either to adopt very creative gaseous waste disposal techniques or introduce non-pollutant production techniques since the current practices are neither responsible nor sustainable. The determination of the authorities to protect the atmosphere from toxic fumes was recently evinced in the landmark Supreme Court judgment in which EPA’s authority was enforced. The decision gives the Obama administration what has been described as the biggest environmentally friendly triumph ever since the institution of the clean air act of 1990. As aforementioned, the act has acted as the baseline or/and motivation for other rulings in matters pertaining air pollution (Philips, 2014). This case also serves to affirm the aforementioned projection of and more environment friendly legal system rather than one protecting the interests of a few industrialists. One of the issues contended in the case was weather EPA could apply good neighbor rules to regulate the emission in cases where a factory located in one state causes pollution in a different state. The court ruled, among other things that if for example, a power plant in Ohio was to produce toxic fumes and they are wind blown into neighboring New York the plant are still liable for the damage even if it occurs hundreds of miles away. This will be a serious blow to coal electricity generating plants; however as above-mentioned it will likely spur a gradual shift to natural gas power plants (Stohr & Drajem , 2014). In the last fiscal year, natural gas fired power plants were supplying have increased to around four times the number of coal ones and given the trend and legal implication of the supreme court ruling the number of coal power plants is bound to go down as those supplied by alternative energy increase. EPA has in the last one year, enjoyed a streak victory against various industries and environmentalist groups in its efforts to regulate and reduce air pollution. In its sixth victory of the year in May 2014, EPA defeated a challenge by a section of environmental groups that wanted to delay the enacting of new rules to combat acid rain. The US court of appeals in Washington agreed with EPA’s claim that acid rain is a highly complex affair and requires the additional study the agency had been lobbying for. The court had also upheld regulatory decisions by EPA concerning cement kilns as well as a power plant mercury and coal mines emission which they deemed to be producing and excessive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Even after environmentalists and industry representatives argued that EPA should allow the activities causing emission, the court of appeals supported EPA’s discretion. Given the string of victories by organizations seeking to reduce pollution over industrial firms, it is clear that the future of the US manufacturing industry has gotten to a point where it’s a matter of choosing between preserving the atmosphere or loosing legitimacy. In the end, many manufactures will in light of the quickly vanishing moral and legal ground, be forced to come up with new ways of production where the environment is not turned into collateral damage in the quest for wealth. . References Bryner, G. (1995). Blue skies, green politics: the Clean Air Act of 1990 and its implementation. Washington, D.C: Congressional Quarterly Philips, M. (2014). The Supreme Court Dims the Lights on Coal Power. BusinessWeek. Retrieved from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-29/the-supreme-courts-epa-ruling-dims-the-lights-on-coal-power-plants Schennach, S. M. (2000). The economics of pollution permit banking in the context of Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 40(3), 189-210. Stohr, G & Drajem M. (2014) Obama Power-Plant Pollution Rule Upheld by Top U.S. Court. Bloomberg News. Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-29/obama-power-plant-pollution-rule-upheld-by-u-s-supreme-court.html Wooley, D. R., Moyer, C. A., & Francis, M. A. (2002). Clean Air Act Handbook. Clark Boardman Company. Zajac, A. (2014) EPA Defeats Groups’ Push to Toughen Rules on Acid Rain. Bloomberg News Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-27/environmental-groups-lose-challenge-to-epa-acid-rain-rulemaking.html Read More