TIA joins effort to curb stricter government ozone standards

Howard Feldman, director of regulatory and scientific policy at the American Petroleum Institute, cites a study by the Manufacturing Alliance/MAPI showing that 7.3 million jobs could be lost by 2020 if the EPA moves forward with a strict new ozone standard.

He also references a recent study by NERA Economic Consulting that concludes: “Not one of EPA’s estimates of the benefits of reducing ozone to a tighter alternative ozone standard is as large as the costs of attaining that respective ozone standard.”

“Now is not the time to saddle our economy with the extraordinary costs associated with the EPA’s proposed national ozone standard,” says TIA Executive Vice President Roy Littlefield.

A much better plan is to “delay this discretionary, out-of- cycle ozone standard and wait until 2013 before determining whether a new standard is needed,” he adds.

“U.S. businesses united in the opposition to the new EPA standard understand that this measure could have significant repercussions in the job market and could put a halt to operations aimed at finding alternative energy solutions,” says Littlefield.

“The new standard could have a significant impact on not only businesses, but the American public as a whole,” he points out.

“TIA continues to work on the issue and hopes that President Obama will see that the last thing America needs at this juncture is anything that could cause more harm to the already-fragile job situation,” says Littlefield.

“The president has a chance to show he’s serious about his stated goal of improving regulations and creating jobs,” Feldman asserts.

“Air quality has, and continues to improve under existing ozone standards – there’s no need to move the goalposts now in the middle of game,” he says. “Changing the standards now would put nearly the entire country into non-compliance and force millions more Americans out of work, but it wouldn’t make us any healthier.”

For more information, visit www.tireindustry.org.