Thread by @drvox

Pollution policy is about power, money, and race, just like everything else in America. vox.com/energy-and-env…

One point I try to make in this piece (and have tried to make repeatedly throughout my career):

The combustion of fossil fuels generates a certain level of social costs. As long as you're using FF, you're generating those costs. The policy question then becomes ...

...about *distribution*, ie, who pays the costs. The entity burning the FF can pay the costs, through taxes or fees or some such. Or the public can pay them, through health-care costs. Someone pays.

The only way to truly reduce or eliminate the costs ...

... is to *burn less fossil fuel*.

So when Trump & Wheeler say they are "reducing costs" through deregulation, they are lying. They aren't reducing costs, they are transferring costs from the private sector to the public.

And research shows that it costs much less for industry to control pollution at the source, or to pay a pollution fee, than it does for the public to pay through sickness & lost work days. So deregulation, in this case, actually *increases* total costs.

That's the scam behind the conservative push to deregulate pollution. They frame it as choosing "the economy" over "the environment," but that's dumb. The people getting sick & missing work days are in the economy too! It's just privatizing benefits & socializing costs.

This is all so basic, but you'd never know it through reading MSM coverage of these battles, which constantly pitch them as a tradeoff between the economy & "the earth" (blech).

Say it with me: someone pays the social costs of FF. The only question is who.