This is the kind of news item that makes you wonder whether the U.S. political system is irretrievably broken. The Biden administration, clearly, is desperate. They’ve seen the midterm projections. They know full well that inflation pisses people off. They’ve got precious little to show for their big legislative push. While there’s almost no chance they’re going to curb the price of anything before voters make up their minds about the November elections, they’d like to be seen as trying something, anything, in the hope that it slightly reduces Democratic losses.
The White House has already done some very foolish things in pursuit of the appearance of productivity, as Kate Aronoff wrote earlier this month. Fining oil companies for not drilling more, for example, wouldn’t just damage the climate; it’s also extremely unlikely to lower gas prices. The process by which gas prices are set, Kate explained, occurs in a mind-bending world of unregulated commodity trading. It’s nothing like the tidy X graph of supply and demand lines you recall from Econ 101.
Ditching summer smog rules, the White House’s thinking goes, would help lower gas prices by reducing costs for refiners and blenders: Currently, they have to omit certain lower-cost, smog-causing ingredients in summer. Waive that requirement, and gasoline could be produced at a cheaper rate. The White House is considering waiving it for all grades of gasoline, according to Reuters.
This is a particularly boneheaded move coming the year after many regions experienced their worst summer air quality in years, both from wildfire smoke and ozone. One report from a Swiss air quality tech company estimated that U.S. air pollution in 2021 was two to three times the limits recommended in World Health Organization guidelines. There’s every indication that this summer will also be very bad—not just because wildfires have started absurdly early this year and the Western drought is worsening but also because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has forecast above-normal temperatures for almost the entire United States for the 2022 summer. Heat both intensifies wildfire risk and increases ground-level ozone, creating smog.
Air quality is not hypothetical stuff. It’s hurting people now. The American Lung Association’s 2022 “State of the Air” report found that over 40 percent of Americans “are living in places with failing grades for unhealthy levels of particle pollution or ozone.” The crisis is accelerating. “In the three years covered by this report,” the authors wrote, “Americans experienced more days of ‘very unhealthy’ and ‘hazardous’ air quality than ever before in the two-decade history of ‘State of the Air.’” People of color are way more likely to live in places where their air is being poisoned by particle pollution and ozone, which in turn is known to cause or exacerbate a dizzying array of health problems: asthma, premature birth, lung cancer, and a weakened immune system. Air pollution is linked to higher Covid-19 death rates, as well.
Yes, high gas prices are hurting people. But the only real solution to that problem, as Kate has pointed out, is to get off gasoline—which would have the salutary effect of keeping the planet livable. When Democratic politicians are considering sacrificing air quality during a respiratory disease pandemic just to look like they’re doing something about gas prices, something is deeply wrong in the party’s politics.
—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor
