Between The Lines - Paul Billings: The Fight for Clean Air (Week Ending Dec. 23, 2011)

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.

The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling

(Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|

Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts: direct or via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog

Stay connected to BTL

Learn how to support our efforts!

Tweets by @BTLRadioNews

Federal Clean Air Standards That Could Save Thousands of Lives is Under Attack

RealAudio MP3

Posted Dec. 14, 2011

Interview with Paul Billings, vice president for national policy and advocacy at the American Lung Association, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

There's good news and bad news about air pollution coming out of Congress and the Obama administration. On the one hand, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new air toxics standards for industrial boilers, which, if implemented, would prevent up to 8,100 premature deaths each year. On the other hand, President Obama recently passed up a chance to implement stricter EPA standards on ground level ozone, or smog. He based his decision on the costs to business, despite scientific research finding that the regulations would have prevented an estimated 12,000 premature deaths annually.

Meanwhile, the assault on the environment is going on full-force in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which on Nov. 30 passed bill HR 1633 out of the Energy and Commerce Committee, that would exempt arsenic, heavy metals and industrial mining operations from regulation under the Clean Air Act. Exempt sources include massive open pit mines, smelters, cement plants, and coal processing plants. By one congressional insider's count, Republicans in the House have introduced 170 anti-environment bills since they took control of that Chamber after the 2010 elections.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Paul Billings, vice president for national policy and advocacy at the American Lung Association, which has been in the forefront of the fight to protect and improve clean air standards. He discusses the status of industrial boiler regulations, HR 1633, and President Obama's decision to kill tighter smog regulations.

PAUL BILLINGS: This is a proposal, so they have to take public comment and hopefully finalize it in the spring of next year. So it's the first step in the process, and this has been a long process for these rules, and in fact, EPA proposed some rules earlier this year that then are a reconsideration or a replacement for those, so they got better and more information from the regulated industry to move forward with these rules. EPA is also poised to do rules to clean up power plants that are due out by Dec. 16, which EPA estimates will save up to 17,000 premature deaths each year. So there are a lot of big rules pending that will have big public health benefits and the important thing is to get them across the finish line and into law.

BETWEEN THE LINES: These proposed rules don't have to go through Congress, do they?

PAUL BILLINGS: They don't have to go through Congress, though Congress can attempt to block them, and in fact the House of Representatives already passed a bill that would delay the clean-up of toxic air pollution like arsenic and mercury from these boilers and change the rules forever by which the EPA could regulate these pollutants in the future. So the House of Representatives really is on a campaign against public health protections, common sense regulation, and has passed a number of bills that would block, delay or eviscerate Clean Air Act authority. The good news is that the U.S. Senate has stood strong and said no repeatedly, and the president has threatened to veto these bills should they reach his desk.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So it seems like it's kind of a mixed bag. The president says he would veto these bills if they get to his desk, but when it was really up to him to allow the smog rule to go forward, he didn't do it.

PAUL BILLINGS: It certainly is a mixed bag, so it's really important that EPA moves forward to clean up these boilers, which will hopefully get done by early next year. These rules to clean up power plants, which are expected to come forward and they're under a court-ordered deadline to meet that Dec. 16 date, so we're all watching and hoping, but at the same time very powerful interests, very monied interests -- the Edison Electric Institute and very, very large power companies -- are throwing everything they can at these EPA rules to try to block and delay them and try to derail them.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Paul Billings, they're not saying they're against clean air, they're saying these new rules would be prohibitively expensive to meet and would cost jobs. Isn't that their stated position?

PAUL BILLINGS: Um, they take a number of tacks to oppose these public health protections. They complain about the costs, even though the benefits far outweigh the costs. They do claim that we are in economic tough times. But at the same time, I've worked on these issues for more than 20 years, and even in economic good times when EPA's been moving forward with clean air rules, they've complained about these things as well, so they trot out the same arguments each time. Generally, they don't debate about the health benefits, but even in this most recent debate with the electric companies, they've argued that mercury doesn't harm kids and there aren't benefits from these rules for protecting health and saving lives. So they're even trying to argue the health benefits, which are clearly and well established. So I wouldn't say they don't debate whether there are clean air benefits; they try every argument they can, because what they don't want to do is make the investments to modernize their facilities, to make them more efficient and more competitive, and to provide clean air to the people that live in the communities and to people who live hundreds of miles away from these facilities as well.

BETWEEN THE LINES: But they live there, and their children and grandchildren live there. Clean air seems like something that human beings should be able to agree on. It seems crazy to me.

PAUL BILLINGS: I can't explain it, because half the power plants in the country have already installed some of these modern pollution controls, so this is not a situation where this can't be done or hasn't been done. And so it's hard to understand why folks would oppose it. It has to be a motivation for their profit motive -- they don't want to make the investment, they don't want to modernize these plants. It's hard to understand, because we all do breathe the air, we all do drink the water, and I've never met anybody yet that's argued the air is too clean or the water's too safe to drink.

BETWEEN THE LINES: How would you rate the Obama administration on this key issue of clean air?

PAUL BILLINGS: We are very disappointed and angry at the president's decision on ozone smog that he made in September, and we are suing the administration in court to enforce the law and follow the science to compel a safe ozone standard, a smog standard to be set. I guess we're also watching this decision that's being made in the next two weeks with respect to cleaning up toxic mercury and arsenic and acid gases from power plants to see how we can evaluate this administration. It's really important that we put public health first, follow the science and the law, and protect people and save lives. It's really important for the public to understand there's a concerted effort in the House of Representatives to roll back these public health protections, these safeguards, and only if the public speaks out and lets Congress know they want air that's clean and healthy to breathe, let their officials know that they care, will we be able to stop these attacks and make sure we move forward with protecting public health and providing clean air for all Americans.

Find more information on the fight for clean air by visiting the American Lung Association website at www.lungusa.org.