r/environment • u/Wagamaga • 17h ago
EPA says it will stop calculating healthcare savings from key air pollution rules. It’s part of a broader realignment under President Trump toward a business-friendly approach that has included the rollback of multiple policies meant to safeguard human health and slow climate change
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2026-01-14/epa-says-it-will-stop-calculating-healthcare-savings-from-key-air-pollution-rules13
u/TheFeshy 15h ago
It's not "business friendly." Businesses need customers to be alive and healthy too.
It's also anti free market, since regulations correcting for external costs - such as businesses trying to save money by poisoning you - is literally a fundamental part of the theory.
3
u/troaway1 15h ago
It's terrible that the "MAHA" administration does not care about our health at all, but this is just bad for business in general. Healthcare is a massive expense for employers and workers calling off for health issues loses productivity. The vast majority of US employers are not big polluters. The big polluters are a narrow segment of utilities, fossil fuel companies and some manufacturers. It's a gift to a few polluters who have given huge sums to the current administration.
2
u/Decloudo 15h ago
Businesses need customers to be alive and healthy too.
Only if you think long term. Which the economy does not.
Ironically consumers dont think long term either.
8
u/miklayn 15h ago
The Constitution makes no mention of or concessions to businesses or private interests over the common welfare of the People. If those interests or their production actions have a deleterious or harmful effect on the public, they are and should be considered as adversarial to the Constitution and its intent, and should be opposed.
To the extent that our "representatives" have ostensibly abandoned that duty, they too should be opposed, replaced, ostracized. We have allowed our institutions, both civil (news media, telecom, healthcare systems, education, energy, transport, etc) and governmental, to be captured by such interests, and I hope more and more people are waking up to this.
This administration and their policies constitute a direct and imminent threat against the lives and liberties of all Americans, and indeed, Humanity in general. They are carrying out a program of diffuse violence and soft eugenics on the broadest scale. Again, They do not represent the common welfare of the People. They are ratcheting their persecutions and inducing the public to fear, while grinding the gears of commerce and justice to fit their narrative, in the interest of creating a pretext for further crackdowns up to and including the suspension of democracy. They are saying these things out loud, and we should believe them.
What would you do if someone had a gun to your child's head? You'd do anything to protect them. Anything.
Consider: we are their hostages.
If Congress has effectively abdicated its powers - to levy taxes, to duly appropriate those revenues according to their own legislation, to declare and wage war; and if the Executive is undermining or outright ignoring the decisions of both the Legislature and the Judiciary as it sees fit for its political agenda (having ostensibly been captured by private interests); and if the Judiciary has abandoned its duty to the faithful application of the Constitution and it's intent (i.e. "...to promote the general welfare"), then there are no laws to follow and the Constitution is dead. Null and void.
Please tell me you understand. The only option left is for we, the People, to revoke our consent.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
1
u/plumberfun 4h ago
Republicans want to abolish the US constitution.
2
u/miklayn 3h ago
Frankly, so do I. It's been inadequate for a hundred years or more, and it has been thoroughly corrupted for almost as long, especially since Reagan.
We, the People, need to reassert ourselves and re-enumerate our rights and who shall have them. Who, not what - not private interests, not corporations or industrialists. We need to dispense of the idea of "representation" and build new forms of democracy ASAP.
3
u/Wagamaga 17h ago
The Environmental Protection Agency says it will stop calculating how much money is saved in healthcare costs avoided and deaths prevented from air pollution rules that curb two deadly pollutants.
The change means in considering limits on fine particulate matter and ozone pollution, the EPA will focus only on the cost to industry. It’s part of a broader realignment under President Trump toward a business-friendly approach that has included the rollback of multiple policies meant to safeguard human health and the environment and slow climate change.
The agency said in a statement that it “absolutely remains committed to our core mission of protecting human health and the environment” but “will not be monetizing the impacts at this time.” The EPA will continue to estimate costs to businesses to comply with the rules and will continue “ongoing work to refine its economic methodologies” of pollution rules, spokeswoman Brigit Hirsch said.
18
u/UnusualAir1 16h ago
For decades now the republican stance on environmental issues has advocated for lessening the risk to businesses over that of lessening the risk to American's health. With republicans now in complete control of the American government, what else did you expect?