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from this equipment (called small off-road engines, or SORE) is expected to exceed the amount of pollution produced by all of the cars and trucks in the state. California is presently taking action against the federal government on this point in the CAA, and other states could follow California – though the current Environmental Protection Agency would likely refuse to amend the act.
Balancing Public Good and Private Enterprise Federal preemption does not seem to be a great way of accomplishing the central mission of the Clean Air Act, though it serves manufacturers, dealers, and users of these devices. So, a central question for all citizens is: Though there are good reasons to accommodate the needs of businesses when crafting laws to protect the public good, has an appropriate balance among all constituents’ interests in this matter been achieved? For those who have upheld states’ rights in the past, why are those rights not important when it comes to protecting our lungs and ears?
Considering the Effects of Our New Choices Even for those of us who are busy working at home, can we steal time from our schedules to ask a few more questions? For instance, if we all switch to electrically powered tools, blowers, mowers, cars, and homes, which use a far cleaner source of energy, what will we do with all the batteries when they need to be replaced? Will we
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require that they be recycled? Are we developing that capacity? Will we ship our old gas-powered devices to lesser developed countries, where dangerous techniques will be used to extract the valuable materials from them? Will we realize that extraction of necessary materials, such as lithium, from the earth is extremely damaging (as is nearly all extraction), and that we should limit it by using advanced technologies to recover these materials from used devices? Will we be complacent until we hear of the horrific environmental damage being done on the front and back ends of our new electricpowered societies? Or can we think and plan ahead, and achieve a virtuous cycle that loses the least amount of necessary constituents and that is truly clean – not simply considered safe because we’re neglecting the externalities?
Creating a Virtuous Cycle to Break the Vicious One Perhaps you’ve enjoyed the relative peace of being at home and have not considered these questions. But as federal and state government leaders move to reopen our world and reboot the global economy, it’s vital you consider them. Ask yourself, Can we maintain a world that is quieter, safer, and less polluting than the world we lived in prior to the pandemic? Can we preserve these cleaner and calmer skies and oceans? Do we have the ability to redesign and rethink our industrial processes?
If we don’t ask these questions now, we will revert to simply accepting the insults and injuries to our bodies and souls, to our dignity, that noise and pollution impose in our daily lives. Why not ask for something better? Rick Reibstein, JD, teaches environmental law and policy at Boston University and is on the faculty at Harvard University's Continuing Education Program. He is also chair of the Legal Advisory Council of the national 501(c)3 nonprofit professional group Quiet Communities, Inc. (https:// quietcommunitiesinc.org/), where he also chairs the QCoP program, Quiet Conversation on Policy. Reibstein helped create and manage a state program in Massachusetts to assist businesses and others to reduce toxics and energy and water use, and he has served as an environmental enforcement attorney at state and federal levels. 1 National Pollution Prevention Roundtable. (2003). An ounce of pollution prevention is worth over 167 billion* pounds of cure: A decade of pollution prevention results 1990–2000. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from https:// www.csu.edu/cerc/researchreports/documents/ AnOunceOfPollutionPreventionIsWorth2003.pdf
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