Saturday, May 08, 2010
"Unhealthy" Air
It appears that our air has gotten cleaner, while the changing definition of "unhealthy" makes us think something different.
And, of course, the media just publishes; never questioning what they are told...
And, of course, the media just publishes; never questioning what they are told...
At BigJournalism.com, Rich Trzupek thinks it's a moving target:
"Having done this research (which took me all of fifteen minutes) I wonder why an enterprising reporter might not smell a rat in the ALA’s claim that the number of Americans breathing 'unhealthy air' increased by almost 50 million people over a two year period, when the amount of actual pollution in the air decreased substantially in the same time frame? The answer leads us back to that troubling word: 'unhealthy.'
For ALA, other environmental groups and their cheerleaders in the MSM, what denotes 'healthy' involves a constantly moving and conveniently ever-shrinking target. Whenever we are close to meeting a particular goal, the Agency creates a new, more stringent standard. This is known within the environmental industry as 'job security.' The air didn’t get any dirtier over the two years covered by the ALA reports. It was rather the definition of dirty – excuse me, 'unhealthy' – that changed; USEPA created tighter air quality goals once again. ALA, the Sierra Club and the other environmentalist groups understand this is how the game is played of course, but they’re hardly going to point such uncomfortable facts out to MSM journalists who swallow whole everything they have to say."
