Someone Should Tell The Environmentalists That The Great Smoky Mountains Aren’t Smoky Because Of Pollution
Over at the far-left, union-financed Think Progress blog they’re taking issue with Rep. Rick Berg’s legislation to protect states from overbearing haze regulation. Here in North Dakota, where the state has always regulated its own haze, we have some of the clearest and cleanest air in the world. Yet still the EPA wants to come in, take over and implement regulations that will hurt the economy.
But according to Think Progress, Republicans like Berg are trying to “keep the EPA from cleaning up dirty haze pollution in our national parks.”
What’s interesting to me is that they use these pictures from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to back up their assertion that haze is a problem:
The pictures are supposed to show the park on a clear day as contrasted with a hazy or polluted day.
But I wonder if they stopped to consider why the range called the Great Smoky Mountains. Wikipedia has the answer:
The name “Smoky” comes from the natural fog that often hangs over the range and presents as large smoke plumes from a distance. This fog, which is most common in the morning and after rainfall, is the result of warm humid air from the Gulf of Mexico cooling rapidly in the higher elevations of Southern Appalachia.
The mountains often look hazy not because of pollution but because of natural atmospheric phenomena.
This is the problem with using a cosmetic standard like haze for government regulation. The environmentalists want us to believe that because a particular area is hazy, that means it’s polluted. This, obviously, isn’t true.
If there’s actual pollution in the Smoky Mountains, then fine. Let’s talk about what’s causing it and what can be done to keep the air cleaner. But using the presence of haze as an indicator is just plain ridiculous.
And certainly, to the point of Berg’s legislation, the states should be in the driver’s seat on environmental regulation. Not the federal government.
Tags: Asshats, environmentalists, Rick Berg
