Gale Norton Quotes

We look back at the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, where people screamed and hollered it's going to be too expensive, they couldn't afford it, and it wouldn't work. And it worked. It worked faster than people expected, at much less cost.

We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?

Clean air is a basic right. The responsibility to ensure that falls to Congress and the president.

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can't breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution.

Environmental quality was drastically improved while economic activity grew by the simple expedient of removing lead from gasoline - which prevented it from entering the environment.

The U.S. has a proud history of cleaning up our air through technological innovation. We did it with leaded gas, acid rain and countless other pollutants, and we can do it with carbon pollution, too.

Rhode Island works hard to reduce air pollution in our communities. We passed laws to prohibit cars and buses from idling their engines and to retrofit school buses with diesel pollution controls. But there is only so much a single state can do, particularly against out-of-state pollution.

We want people to tell us the possible steps that can be taken to save ourselves from the harmful effects of air pollution.

Years of government inaction on air pollution has got people thinking that the state cannot even protect basic public goods like clean air.

The biggest tab the public picks up for fossil fuels has to do with what economists call 'external costs,' like the health effects of air and water pollution.

In the rich world, the environmental situation has improved dramatically. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has been cut by more than half since 1955, rivers and coastal waters have dramatically improved, and forests are increasing.

Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

To deal with local pollution, China has put on the agenda the capping of coal, which has long been a sensitive issue.

Despite Arizona's remarkable growth in recent years, we have met the current federal health standards for ozone pollution and the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved our dust control plan.

Take air quality in the United States today: It's about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars.

I am not convinced the Clean Air Act was ever intended to regulate or classify as a dangerous pollutant something as basic and ubiquitous in our atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal. At least one execution for that offense is recorded. But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England.

Pollution doesn't respect state boundaries and it is difficult if not impossible to solve these problems on a state by state basis.

L.a. 's air pollution has turned an environmental issue into everybody's issue.

China may achieve its goal of reducing the carbon intensity of its economy (the ratio of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of output) by 45 percent below its 2005 level by 2020. But the country is growing so fast that its coal consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are expected to continue to increase. China is expected to add the equivalent of a new 500-megawatt coal-fired electric plant every 10 days for the next decade...

We can be thankful President Barack Obama is taking aim at one of the prime causes of climate change and extreme weather: air pollution. The EPA's carbon pollution standards are the most significant step forward our country has ever taken to protect our health by addressing climate change.

Climate change and air pollution know no borders, and antibiotics resistance respects no boundaries. Bacteria from Africa can make people in America sick. The burning of Indonesian forests can keep Asia gasping for breath.

It should be noted that the EPA's banning of methanol is categorically absurd from the point of view of environmental protection.

Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked.

The U.S. limits mercury, arsenic, and soot from power plants. Yet, astonishingly, there are no national limits on how much carbon pollution these plants can dump into our atmosphere.