Today
the world is facing the issue of air pollution mostly due to different kinds of
human activities concentrated in urban areas. The air is mainly polluted
due to two reasons. The primary reason is the heavy emissions of gasses
like S02, NO2, CO2, OZONE, in the atmosphere. These are generally emitted
from power plants, industries and automobiles. Ozone in the ground seems to be
problematic whereas up in the atmosphere is thought to be useful. And other is
due to the presence of Particular Matter PM) mixture of solid particles and
liquid droplets found in the air. These particular matters lead to pathological
consequences to human health and bio- diversity. If we were to create inventory
of consequences due to air pollution and its effects, the list of things we do
not know seems greater than the explanation of what we know. Although, there
has been a lot progress has been made towards purifying the air in the U.S.
still the situation is not so encouraging. Actually, measuring progress of air
pollution is very costly, too. The Clean Air Act of 1970 is thought to be the most
comprehensive federal law that regulates air emissions from stationary and
mobile sources. This basically focuses to regulate emissions of hazardous air
pollutants to protect public health and public welfare .Many believe that The
1970 Clean Air Act amendments were a braking point that paved the way for the widespread
consensus that air pollution control must be a top priority of the federal
government.
It
is learned that for nearly 150 years, environmental concerns have been part of
the U.S. political agenda. Particularly, in the recent decades, the issues of
environment have also been affected by the political support, priorities of
government leadership. With massive industrialization our mother earth is
facing environmental impacts in a scaling rate. Along with it is the expansion
of environmental politics to a wider spectrum of political action, ranging from
local level to global controls over CO2 emissions. If am not wrong, Republicans
believe that strict environmental standards hurt businesses and hence support
reductions in environmental regulations while Democrats have a strong faith
that health of families and the strength of the economy depend on proper
governance of the environment through strict compliances of the regulations.
They are geared to strengthen the laws that ensure people have clean air to breathe
and safe water to drink. The Democrats reject the idea that a healthy economy
and a healthy environment cannot co-exist, because they believe that a cleaner
environment means a stronger economy. They advocate to combat air pollution and
improve the economy, and believe that communities, environmental interests, and
government should work together to protect the resources while ensuring the
vitality of local economies. It is also learned that Republicans are skeptical
about global warming whereas Democrats treat it as a serious issue.
If
look into the issue of CO2, during the term of George W. Bush–era EPA staff found that CO2 is a pollutant, but then
administrator of the EPA rejected the recommendation and delayed the process of
regulating it, partly due to Bush Administration's lack of genuine interest towards combating global
climate change. The EPA’s finding could play a vital role in nationwide
regulation of CO2 emissions by concluding that greenhouse gases pose a threat
to public health just like the EPA is require to regulate pollutants like
smog-causing sulfur dioxide.
We can see that regulating CO2 will
be immensely more complicate the U.S emits CO2 from countless sources and the
amount seems to be increasing heavily. For some years EPA ramined silent about how it might actually
regulate CO2 and environmentalists vision that it is too difficult to imagine
that the agency would attempt to control every possible source of greenhouse
gas emissions. CO2 is in many ways considered as good for plants and human
life. Considering CO2 as pollutant may be controversial when we think water
vapor produced in the greenhouse chamber. Here, another notion of regulating
water vapor may come into play. Another recent issue in this context is the
Obama administration’s proposed rule to control greenhouse gas emissions from
new power plants the first step could go far toward closing out the era of
old-fashioned coal-burning power generation. The proposed rule seems to be
rooted in a 2007 directive from the Supreme Court instructing the E.P.A. to
decide whether carbon dioxide was a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It is learned that in late 2009, the EPA
declared that it was, and so had to be regulated.
Among the dilemmas on policy
regulation and compliances whichever political parties come into government, the
issues are to be dealt so that growing issues get tackled for the
benefit of human beings and biodiversity on earth. If every issues become politically attached
, things might exacerbated and may lead to difficulty in resolving them in the future. So,
political conesus to better world is should be the deal for the day. We need
real actions not much of policy and voice that rarely get implemented. Let
polices not create any controversy but tackle real issues of the day.
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