The Winston-Salem Journal cheers the EPA’s proposed stricter standards for smog:
While the Obama administration concedes that meeting the new standards will be expensive — perhaps as much as $90 billion nationwide — it also will produce enormous savings by cutting smog. If the standards go into effect, Americans could save from $13 billion to $100 billion a year on avoided medical costs and higher worker productivity.
For starters, the Journal conveniently doesn’t mention the fact that North Carolina’s air has probably never been cleaner.
And While the Journal gives the state legislature credit for mandating that they derive more and more of their electricity from alternative sources, they go on to say that the legislature “has not adequately tackled the major source of smog — transportation.” You guessed it —- the Journal believes North Carolina needs more mass transit at who-knows-what cost, despite the fact that ridership is down all over the country.
As for state-mandated renewable power sources, JLF legal analyst Daren Bakst says North Carolina is acting like a “California wannabe” (heaven help us) and that Senate Bill 3 should definitely be repealed.
