Most Americans breath dirty air — in many places, levels of
pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and ozone are in violation of
federal air quality standards. And now, those standards are
getting even stronger, which will put even more of the country
out of compliance: EPA recently upped standards for nitrogen
dioxide and is working on strengthening limits for other
pollutants. But to make real improvements in air quality without
breaking the bank, what is called for is not another round of
top-down regulation, but an update of the Clean Air Act to allow
strong market-based solutions. Progress on cleaning our nation’s
air pollution has slowed because of the Clean Air Act’s
structure. The law was adopted in 1970 and hasn’t been updated
since 1990. It worked well in the past when there was plenty of
low hanging fruit-cheap reductions that achieved big benefits.
But now its format, which relies on each state to create
detailed plans to meet national air quality goals, has become
unbearably cumbersome. The state plans