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Earlier this year, President TrumpsEPA opted to keep a regulatory standardimposed by President Obamas EPA that aims to reduce amount of particulate matter emitted by industry.

These National Ambient Air Quality Standards, or NAAQS, have become a lightning rod issue for activists seeking to capitalize on the national apprehension around the COVID/Wuhan Virus crisis.

Surprisingly, many of the same voices who championed the Obama EPAs 2012 NAAQS standards are nowvocally opposedto them since they are being extended by a political rival. Even the head of the EPA under Obama a person who certainly had the opportunity to change the current rule herself iscriticizingthis move by the current EPA administrator.

NAAQS standards are designed to regulate pollutants that are common in outdoor air and are considered harmful to public health and the environment.

Exposure to a large amount of particulate matter pollution, especially if it persisted over a long period of time, could damage your lungs. But in the 50 years since the Clean Air Act was first enacted, air standards have gotten tougher and tougher, and our air has become cleaner and cleaner.

Indeed, annual concentrations of fine particulate matter in our air havedecreased nearly 40 percentin just the last 20 years.Americans pay for that increased regulation in with depressed employment and higher prices. Despite the economic impacts, many would argue that the trade-offs justify a cleaner, more healthy environment.

In this case, however,the majority of outside scientists advising EPAdid notfind sufficient justification for changing the current standard.

Why not lower the standard and make the air even cleaner? The problem is that regulations cost money and that means they cost jobs. Take away jobs and you take away the quality of life the ability to hope for a better life.

Regulation in the United States isexpensive about $10,000 per employee. For small businesses, the cost is even higher. The manufacturing sector bears the brunt of this cost with small businesses absorbing costs of nearly $35,000 per employee every year. The vastmajority of those costswere from federal environmental regulations. Those costs prevent businesses from hiring new employees and investing in new opportunities.

The newly minted opponents of the Obama EPA particulate rule are nowtoutinga Harvard Universitystudythat the opponents claim provides a link between deaths due to the Wuhan Virus and increased particulate matter pollution. But the Harvard study itself only argues for continuing to enforce existing air pollution regulations, which is exactly what EPA proposes to do here. Even if the study is later verified through a peer-review process, EPA is not proposing to loosen the standards for particulate emissions. Instead, the Obama-era rule will remain in effect.

Another factor that must be considered is the impact of the coronavirus. With state governments shutting down businesses for an extended period, what will the effect be of any new regulatory standard on the country as it struggles to recover from a massive economic disaster?

Because of the shutdown, more than 38 million Americans havelost their jobs. This does not include the self-employed or gig-economy workers. The unemployment rate is already the highest it has been since the Great Depression nearly a century ago. The current unemployment rate of nearly 15 percent is significantly higher than thegreat recession of 2007-2009. Nearly one-half of Americans areunemployed.

More regulation will not bring those jobs back. It will have the opposite effect. During its first 15 years that the Clean Air Act was in force,nearly 600,000 jobs were lostdue to the new regulations. Those jobs were lost at a time we had a functioning economy. That is not the situation in which we currently find ourselves, however. The stay-at-home orders have hammered our nations economy, and nobody knows how long it will take to rebuild.

In December of 2019 we had anunemployment rate of 3.4 percent. Employers were havinga difficult timefinding employees to fill job openings. Today we have a complete reversal. Now people who want a job are having a hard time finding companies that are still in operation. More than100,000 small businesseshave permanently closed their doors. Many larger businesses have closed many of their locations and bankruptcy filings are on the rise.

Now is not the time to put more burdens on business. If anything, the federal government should be looking for ways to reduce the regulatory burden in order to get the economy moving again.

In this case, however, EPA is only proposing to maintain an Obama-era regulation that was lauded by environmental advocates at the time.

There is no new scientific consensus that the EPA under President Obama made a mistake in adopting the PM standards in 2012. EPA is right to reject calls to make those standards more stringent, particularly when the American economy is struggling to rebound from a historic calamity.

Anthony Caso is the director of the Claremont Institutes Constitutional Jurisprudence Clinic at Chapman University, Fowler School of Law.

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Now is not the time for more regulations - OCRegister