The Hill News

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) analysis of the benefits and costs of the Clean Air Act is one of the most thorough and thoroughly peer-reviewed cost benefit analyses ever carried out by an institution -- governmental, private, or academic. Margo Thorning’s attempt to discredit it in her Monday blog post is way off base.
 
Thorning is vice president of the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), whose board consists of representatives of industries who have opposed clean air standards, including the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Electric Power Research Institute.
 
EPA estimates that by 2020, the Clean Air Act will bring almost $2 trillion in health and environmental gains, with increased life expectancy accounting for the lion’s share of benefits. But Thorning argues that these benefits are meaningless because they are not counted in gross domestic product (GDP), i.e., they ! are not actual goods or services exchanged in the market. The fundamental problem with this argument is that confuses GDP with well-being.

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