Happy belated birthday to the Clean Air Act which turned 40 on Tuesday, Sept. 14. In honor of the occasion, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson gave a speech touting the many accomplishments of the act. Among them, health and life-saving benefits of gigantic proportions. EPA says that, in the act’s first 20 years alone, clean air programs prevented 205,000 premature deaths and 18 million respiratory illnesses among children.

Jackson also spoke of the Clean Air Act’s impact on the economy. John Broder at the New York Times’ Green blog has a recap:

She said that lobbyists had falsely claimed for years that the measure and the agency’s application of it would shutter factories, kill jobs and cost billions for compliance. But each of these doomsday predictions was proved wrong, she said, asserting that the bill saves tens of thousands of lives each year and returns $40 in health and environmental benefits for every dollar in compliance cost.

“Say what you want about E.P.A.’s business sense,” she told an audience of agency officials, environmental advocates and business lobbyists, “but we certainly know how to get a return on our investment.”

She said the law had not only improved health and cleaned up the nation’s skies, “it has been remarkably effective at proving lobbyists wrong.” 

But as Broder points out, despite the evidence, industry representatives and their allies in Congress continue to pillory the Clean Air Act and assail any attempt to write new clean air regulations. The latest targets have been EPA regulations on climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions.

Among the lawmakers leading the anti-EPA charge is Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Yesterday in Washington, under clear sunny skies and with air quality readings showing low levels of ozone and particulate matter, Rockefeller criticized EPA in front of a group of coal miners and advocates organized by coal industry lobbying firms. He saved some of his harshest rhetoric specifically for Jackson, according to Congress Daily:

"She doesn't understand the sensitivities of the economies and what unemployment means," Rockefeller told the crowd. "Her job is relatively simple. She just says 'clean everything and keep it clean. Don't do anything to disturb perfection.' You can't do coal and do that at the same time." 

But the Clean Air Act has been successful for 40 years, and we still rely on coal for the majority of our electricity. How does Rockefeller reconcile that?

Furthermore, Based on Jackson’s comments mentioned above, it’s pretty clear that Rockefeller is wrong: Jackson is attuned to economics. Regulation can be good for the economy when it keeps people healthy and saves lives, if for no other reason than healthy, living people are more likely to work, innovate, earn, and spend than sick people, and much more likely than dead people.

It’s clear the health of the overall economy is not a priority for Rockefeller, his many cronies in Congress, and the cadre of industry and anti-regulatory lobbyists lodging tirade after tirade about EPA air and climate standards. They’re perfectly willing to accept a sick economy, and sick people, so long as Big Coal’s bottom line isn’t affected.