Some students get their assignments at the beginning of the semester, open their calendars, and start planning their lives around when to hand in that term paper. Then there’s the rest of us. We know it’s good to plan ahead, but…look, party at Nick’s tonight! It may, of course, be perfectly rational to blow off assignments until the very end. Why not have fun in the meantime? But few students would claim that the paper deadline hit them as a surprise. Most know the game they are playing. When billion-dollar companies are doing the same, you can be fairly sure it’s a well-calculated move. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a long-awaited and long-delayed rule to cut emissions in 27 American states. Just how long-awaited was it? The Clean Air Act Amendments that call for this “good neighbor rule” were signed into law by George H.W. Bush in 1990. Still, some companies manage to feign surprise and shout “regulatory overreach.” The rule is good news all around. It finally considers the fact that pollution doesn’t just stay local but that the wind blows it to neighboring states and beyond. It saves tens of thousands of lives at low cost. Someone, of course, has to pay these low costs, and that would be utilities. A few have been partying all semester—or rather, for decades. The oldest plants that will be shut down as a result of this rule have been operating since World War II. Companies have been milking them for all they are worth ever since, knowing that they will have to shut them down any day now. Many utility bosses’ claims of massive costs are about as credible as a frat boy claiming “professorial overreach” when it comes time to write that final paper.
Some students get their assignments at the beginning of the semester, open their calendars, and start planning their lives around when to hand in that term paper. Then there’s the rest of us. We know it’s good to plan ahead, but…look, party at Nick’s tonight! It may, of course, be perfectly rational to blow off assignments until the very end. Why not have fun in the meantime? But few students would claim that the paper deadline hit them as a surprise. Most know the game they are playing. When billion-dollar companies are doing the same, you can be fairly sure it’s a well-calculated move. Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a long-awaited and long-delayed rule to cut emissions in 27 American states. Just how long-awaited was it? The Clean Air Act Amendments that call for this “good neighbor rule” were signed into law by George H.W. Bush in 1990. Still, some companies manage to feign surprise and shout “regulatory overreach.” The rule is good news all around. It finally considers the fact that pollution doesn’t just stay local but that the wind blows it to neighboring states and beyond. It saves tens of thousands of lives at low cost. Someone, of course, has to pay these low costs, and that would be utilities. A few have been partying all semester—or rather, for decades. The oldest plants that will be shut down as a result of this rule have been operating since World War II. Companies have been milking them for all they are worth ever since, knowing that they will have to shut them down any day now. Many utility bosses’ claims of massive costs are about as credible as a frat boy claiming “professorial overreach” when it comes time to write that final paper.
