THE SET-UP: Externalities are “costs or benefits caused by an economic actor that is not suffered or enjoyed by that same actor.”
That’s the elegantly simplified definition offered by Investopedia.
I would add that externalities are also sleeping pills for polluters, poisoners and the purveyors of ecological calamity.
That’s because externalities—like the toxic pollution that’s turned an 85-mile swath of Louisiana into “Cancer Alley”—offer the only explanation for how some “economic actors” sleep at night.
How else could a thinking, feeling human being roll into the office every morning, well-rested and raring to go despite the fact that what they’ll do today could lead to their neighbor’s cancer tomorrow?
That’s what makes externalities so damn appealing. Out of sight, out of mind.
Move production of Chemical X to disadvantaged neighborhood or to a lightly regulated country and voila! … after a couple-few years you won’t even know that there’s a sacrifice zone around that petrochemical ATM machine that pays for 18 holes of golf at the country club or your mountain retreat in outside Jackson Hole.
Of course, those costs could’ve been externalized before they joined the company. So, maybe they just didn’t know about the damage they caused down-wind or down-stream … or perhaps they simply couldn’t foresee the fallout to an ecosystem … or maybe the science didn’t initially show it was deadly and that its toxicity would last forever.
I get it. It can be complicated, particularly if you don’t work in a corner office or hold a seat on the board.
But then we have the people who know full-well about the damage and use that knowledge to perpetuate the externalities. They hide and hedge and dissemble to keep the benefits coming by making sure the true, human and ecological of Chemical X is externalized. Many of pollution-producing industries work hard privatize the profits and socialize the cost.
There’s one catch, though.
There are no externalities in nature.
Every drop of non-stick poison and every metric ton of methane goes on the credit card we as a species hold with the bank of Mother Nature.
Sure, a scumbag who passes through the revolving door from the chemical industry to the EPA might never personally feel the impact of an externality that killed hundreds or thousands of people … or an externality that poisoned a stream or killed off scores of fish. But collectively, we cannot avoid the bill when it comes due … like it has with PFAS and lead and microplastics and carbon. Her billing cycle is on geological time. But when we reach her limits she can foreclose very quickly … and very dramatically.
The EPA was created to forestall foreclosure … and to the extent it’s been successful, it’s also why scumbags are sent through its revolving door. - jp
TITLE: Trump Administration Said to Drop Lawsuit Over Toxic Chemical
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/climate/trump-administration-lawsuit-denka-carcinogen.html
EXCERPTS: The Trump administration plans to drop a federal lawsuit against a chemical manufacturer accused of releasing high levels of a likely carcinogen from its Louisiana plant, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The government filed the lawsuit during the Biden administration after regulators determined that chloroprene emissions from the Denka Performance Elastomer plant were contributing to health concerns in an area with the highest cancer risk of any place in the United States.
The 2023 lawsuit was among several enforcement actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of poor and minority communities that have disproportionately borne the brunt of toxic pollution.
The Denka plant is located in the predominantly Black community of LaPlace, La., in a region so dense with industrial facilities that it is known as “Cancer Alley.” Chloroprene is used to produce neoprene, a synthetic rubber that is found in automotive parts, hoses, beer cozies, orthopedic braces and electric cables.
The lawsuit had given the neighboring community a measure of hope that pollution levels might finally come down, said Robert Taylor, a founder of Concerned Citizens of St John Parish, a community group.
“The fact that they may drop this is very hard for us,” said Mr. Taylor, who has been fighting pollution from the plant for more than a decade. “We need to regroup and revitalize ourselves and get ready for a very difficult struggle.”
In 2023, the E.P.A. and Justice Department sued Denka, arguing that the plant posed an “imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare” and should be compelled to reduce its emissions.
In announcing the lawsuit, the E.P.A. said that it had found that children under 18 accounted for about 20 percent of the population living within two and a half miles of the Denka plant. More than 300 children who attended an elementary school located less than 500 feet from the Denka facility had been exposed to chloroprene emissions, the agency said.
Children under the age of 16 are particularly vulnerable to mutagenic carcinogens like chloroprene, the E.P.A. has found.
Executives at Denka, a Japanese company that acquired the elastomer plant from DuPont in 2015, could not be reached for comment. Paul Nathanson, a senior principal at Bracewell, a law firm that has represented Denka, declined to comment.
David Uhlmann, who led enforcement at the E.P.A. under the Biden administration, said that dismissing the case “makes clear where the Trump administration stands, fighting for polluters at the expense of a community that simply wants to breathe clean air.”
She Lobbied for a Carcinogen. Now She’s at the E.P.A., Approving New Chemicals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/climate/epa-lynn-dekleva-formaldehyde.html
EXCERPTS: Formaldehyde, the chemical of choice for undertakers and embalmers, is also used in products like furniture and clothes. But it can also cause cancer and severe respiratory problems. So, in 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency began a new effort to regulate it.
The chemicals industry fought back with an intensity that astonished even seasoned agency officials. Its campaign was led by Lynn Dekleva, then a lobbyist at the American Chemistry Council, an industry group that spends millions of dollars on government lobbying.
Dr. Dekleva is now at the E.P.A. in a crucial job: She runs an office that has the authority to approve new chemicals for use. Earlier she spent 32 years at Dupont, the chemical maker, before joining the E.P.A. in the first Trump administration.
Her most recent employer, the chemicals lobbying group, has made reversing the Environmental Protection Agency’s course on formaldehyde a priority and is pushing to abolish a program under which the agency assess the risks of chemicals to human health. In recent weeks it has urged the agency to discard its work on formaldehyde entirely and start from scratch in assessing the risks.
The American Chemistry Council is also seeking to change the agency’s approval process for new chemicals and speed up E.P.A.’s safety reviews. That review process is a key part of Dr. Dekelva’s purview at the agency.
Another former chemistry council lobbyist, Nancy Beck, is back alongside Dr. Dekleva at the E.P.A. in a role regulating existing chemicals. The council’s president, Chris Jahn, told a Senate hearing shortly after the Trump inauguration that his group intended to tackle the “unnecessary regulation” of chemicals in the United States. “A healthy nation, a secure nation, an economically vibrant nation relies on chemistry,” he said.
It is not unusual or unlawful for industry groups to seek to influence public policy in the interest of their member companies. The A.C.C. estimates that products using formaldehyde support more than 1.5 million jobs in the United States.
What has been extraordinary, health and legal experts said, is the extent of the industry’s effort to block the E.P.A.’s scientific work on a chemical long acknowledged as a carcinogen, and how the architect of the effort was back at the agency as a regulator of chemicals. At the same time, the Trump administration has moved to sharply reduce the federal scientific work force.
“They already have a track record of ignoring the science,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California, San Francisco. “Now, they’re in charge of government agencies that decide the rules.”
For more than 150 years, the National Academies has advised the U.S. government on science. In 2021, it was asked to weigh in on the E.P.A.’s work on formaldehyde.
It became a target of the American Chemistry Council.
The industry group used freedom of information laws to obtain internal emails of members and support staff of a panel assessing the E.P.A.’s formaldehyde review, and it accused one staff of showing “bias in favor of disputed research claiming formaldehyde causes leukemia.”
The staff member, a former Environmental Protection Agency scientist, had for example described as “wonderful” the news that Congress might try to replicate an influential Chinese study that had shown formaldehyde could cause leukemia.
Wendy E. Wagner, professor at the University of Texas School of Law and an expert on the use of science by environmental policymakers, said she did not see how the comment reflected bias. “After all, they don’t know what the results will be, do they?” she said. “I would expect all scientists to be enthusiastic about potential future research.”
Dr. Dekleva called for investigations at both the E.P.A. and the National Academies, and for the removal of potentially biased panel members and staff. That included scientists who had previously accepted federal research grants.
In July 2023, the industry group sued the E.P.A., as well as the National Academies, accusing researchers of a lack of scientific integrity. The chemistry council said that lack of integrity made the use of the National Academies research in regulating formaldehyde “arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful.”
“It was relentless, and beyond the pale,” said Maria Doa, a scientist at the E.P.A. for 30 years who is now senior director of chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund. “They really ratcheted up their attacks on federal employees.”
The National Academies stood its ground, issuing a report the following month affirming the E.P.A.’s Integrated Risk Information System findings that formaldehyde is carcinogenic and increases leukemia risk.
Those conclusions are shared by other global health authorities.
Mary Schubauer-Berigan, the evidence-synthesis head at the World Health Organization’s Agency for Research on Cancer, said there was “sufficient evidence in humans” that formaldehyde causes leukemia as and nasopharynx cancer. Mikko Vaananen, a spokesman for the European Chemicals Agency, said that while some questions around specific links to leukemia remained unanswered, evidence was sufficient to classify formaldehyde as a carcinogen. Formaldehyde “cannot in principle be placed on the E.U. market,” he said.
In March 2024, a federal judge dismissed the chemistry council’s lawsuit. And early this year, near the end of the Biden administration, the E.P.A. issued a final risk determination, under the Toxic Substances Control Act: Formaldehyde “presents an unreasonable risk of injury to human health.”
Mary A. Fox, an expert in chemical risk assessment at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a member of a committee that reviewed the E.P.A.’s research on formaldehyde, said agency scientists had accurately reflected the uncertainties around the links between formaldehyde and leukemia. But they had documented many other streams of evidence that indicated that link, Dr. Fox said.
“It’s an inevitable progress of science, that as we learn more over time, we generally learn that health effects appear at lower concentrations than we had thought,” she said.
Following Mr. Trump’s re-election, the American Chemistry Council signed onto a letter from a range of industry groups calling for broad changes to policy, specifically citing formaldehyde. “We urge your administration to pause and reconsider” the E.P.A. findings on formaldehyde, the Dec. 5 letter said.
The E.P.A. “should go back to the scientific drawing board,” chemistry council said in January. The group was particularly concerned about the workplace limits the agency was suggesting, which it said ignored steps companies were already taking to protect workers, like the use of personal protective equipment.
The A.C.C. is also supporting a bill from Republican members of Congress that would end the Integrated Risk Information System.
Soon after, Trump transition officials said Dr. Dekleva would be returning to the E.P.A. to run a program assessing chemicals for approval. The chemistry council, which has long complained of a backlog, is pushing the agency to speed up approvals.
During the first Trump administration, agency whistle-blowers described in an inspector general’s investigation how they had faced “intense” pressure to eliminate the backlog, sometimes at the expense of safety. Shortly after the inauguration, the Trump administration fired the inspector-general who carried out the investigation.
On Jan. 20, the A.C.C. welcomed President Trump. “Americans want a stronger, more affordable country,” said Mr. Jahn, the group’s president. “America’s chemical manufacturers can help.”
TITLE: Trump pick for EPA official discloses industry clients, law firm pay
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-pick-epa-official-discloses-industry-clients-law-firm-pay-2025-02-24/
EXCERPTS: President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the second-in-charge at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earned at least $3.2 million in legal fees over the last year representing clients including Chevron, Ford and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to documents made public, opens new tab on Monday.
The filings for David Fotouhi of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, nominated to serve as deputy administrator of the EPA, were posted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, which oversees the executive branch’s ethics program.
Fotouhi’s disclosure showed he provided legal services to other Gibson Dunn clients, including Sunoco, Boeing, CSX, Delta Air Lines, Kimberly-Clark and Lowe’s.
He also provided legal work to NEOM Company, a massive development project in the Saudi Arabian desert, according to the disclosure. The filings do not show the scope of Fotouhi's involvement.
Gibson Dunn, Fotouhi's longtime law firm, employs more than 2,000 attorneys and is one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the United States. He served in EPA’s legal office during the first Trump administration before returning to the firm.
The Trump administration has vowed to roll back the Biden-era climate agenda, including EPA regulations to reduce carbon dioxide, methane and other emissions.
Trump’s EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, this month said the agency would seek to end Biden-era contracts to distribute $20 billion in grants to fund clean energy and transportation projects in disadvantaged communities.
SEE ALSO:
As Part Of Trump’s Anti-DEI Push, USDA Cuts $75M Tree Planting Grant, Jeopardizing Environmental Justice
https://afrotech.com/usda-cuts-75m-tree-planting-grant-environmental-justice-anti-dei