P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

I'm old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.

It seems the EPA has worked hard to devise new regulations that are designed to eliminate coal mining, coal burning, usage of coal.

Our hope is we move beyond denial and into debate... If we cleaned up the air, would it really be bad for us?

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.

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.

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.

Ever since I've been in Congress, various groups on the business side, those entities that are creating jobs out there, have felt that the Clean Air Act is really - that there are all sorts of presumptions in favor of the environmentalists.

Five states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and North Carolina - have been identified by the EPA as contributing significantly to Rhode Island pollution. As of 2010, 284 tall smokestacks - stacks over 500 feet - were operating in the United States: needles injecting poison into the atmosphere.

We've sued out-of-state power plants that are polluting our air and led a coalition of attorneys general from Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts against efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives to remove critical environmental regulations that protect New York communities from toxic pollution.

The EPA issued the MATS rule in 2012, and it is the first national standard created to address power plant emissions of toxic air pollutants. Under MATS, power plants are required to install equipment to reduce emissions of specific pollutants, such as mercury and sulfur dioxide.

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

The point of fact is, just in simple ways, you can see how much better things have gotten. I mean, when I was a child, I lived in England, and England was just amazingly polluted. We didn't use that word. We just said it was it all covered with soot.

It's very important that we expand our use of clean energy and make a long-term commitment to it. Biodiesel and ethanol are better for the environment and for the air we breathe. The use of biodiesel is a positive step toward minimizing pollutive emissions and greenhouse gases. By focusing on school buses, we can affect the health and wellbeing of the people most susceptible to that pollution - our children - today.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the ability to more stringently regulate dust. If the EPA determines more stringent standards are necessary, family farmers and ranchers, as well as rural economies, would be devastated.

Cap and trade is an important tool in California's climate policy portfolio. It sends a price signal to industries to reduce their carbon pollution while generating billions of dollars in revenue for investments in clean transportation and direct pollution reduction.

I am very concerned that federal and state air quality programs do not consider public health in regulating certain classes of industrial air emissions.

Caring about the long-term vibrancy of our coasts means transitioning ambitiously to cleaner energy, which would spur job growth in high-paying industries and cut 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.

For me, clean fuels translates into cleaner air for Oregonians. I think that's a good thing.

Ultimately, refiners, like all of us, are going to have to clean up their emissions.

The infrastructure at Union Station is antiquated. High-speed is going to come in eventually. We need to upgrade that system. Every day the Metro comes in, the Amtrak comes in, and they idle their engines for hours, spewing poisonous toxins - all that crap - into the air.

The modern city consists of...dark, narrow streets full of gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gasses, torn by the noise.

Keep in mind, Mike Bloomberg's kids and grandkids are breathing that air just like the coalminers' families are breathing that air. And the coalminers are the ones that have the conflict. They want their jobs, I understand that. They need to be able to feed their families. They also have to worry about their health and the health of their families.

Every American expects and deserves clean air, and then we act on that belief, then we will set an example for the rest of the world to follow.

I try not to be either optimistic or pessimistic. I try not to think about outcomes on that scale. My job, it seems to me, is to wake up every morning and figure out how to cause as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as I can.