GUEST SPEAKER: Dear secretary of the interior, thank you for inviting me to weigh in on this very important counter study to and indefensible claim by the heritage society. As you know, this conservative organization is pushing for free enterprise in limited government. So they're merely trying to deregulate to support free enterprise and to help their allies, including industry to save some money.
As you know, in 1970 the EPA was formed to control the extreme pollution of water and air in this country. These conditions were causing fish kills, bird [INAUDIBLE], and having negative effects on human health. [INAUDIBLE] control policy suggests that clean [INAUDIBLE] were established, also in 1970, to regulate the use of these pollutants. The goal was to protect the ecosystem and human health for future generations. And so far, it's been effective from the point of view of scientists and environmental advocates. It's a success. Pollution has been vastly reduced to [INAUDIBLE] [? implementation ?] these policies and this is a tremendous achievement, so why stop now is our argument.
There are still extremely endangered ecosystems in the country and industries are constantly inventing new products that have new negative effects on the environment that we're not yet aware of. So the study we conduct to challenge the heritage societies claims will have four parts. First, we'll focus on science benchmarks. We'll also focus on topic opinion, propose an administrative review of the EPA, and a review by the Justice Department. So for our first pillar, the scientific measurements will hire an outside team of environmental scientists to evaluate air and water quality and how it has improved since 1970.
Scientists must also prove that threats to the health of our environment, to our clean air and water, still exists and that regulation of anything should be expanded and improved and not reduced or terminated. We need to frame our study and focus on scientific results to counter the heritage societies focus on economic results. We will design a study based on science and numbers, because that is how you will measure the efficacy of a program like the clean air act. So focus on how you improve vehicle emissions, how efficient bird have bounced back. And this will help legitimate our study in the eyes of the scientific community and we'll also involve the scientific community.
We can also come at this from an angle that will satisfy the business community and congress. We can require companies to maintain certain air quality standards as a means to spur innovation. We've been innovative in this regard so far. We've invented cleaner fuels, renewable energy and we believe that the American people can invent even better, cleaner technologies and the regulation will help inspire that.
Our second component will focus on the public stance on the issue of environmental protection. We're in an unprecedented era in environmental awareness and the public is completely behind it. I'd like to bring your attention to a very revealing ruling that just came out in the last few weeks in Massachusetts. Two men used their lobster boat to block a coal shipment from passing through the channel on its way to Brayton Point Power Plant. The men were on trial for several counts and faced several years in jail and the judge ruled that he approved the use of necessity as a defense for their actions.
In order to use the necessity defense, you have to prove that you were in clear and imminent danger. And in this instance, the defense argues the men in their communities were in clear and imminent danger of climate change. So the judge decreed they had no legal alternative to protect themselves and their communities other than to try to block the coal shipment. So the prosecutors subsequently dropped the charges. So obviously this is a totally unprecedented case. This is an exciting time for environmental progressives.
Judges are going rouge on this issue and they're allowing people a lot of room to maneuver, to fight environmental problems, so we want to design a policy [INAUDIBLE] that involves the public energy as much as possible. So we're going to educate the public, we're going to use some of our funding to organize conferences and small community advisory committees. These committees will call small meetings in their communities and discuss the EPA's [INAUDIBLE] control policies and they can weigh in on whether or not they think those policies should continue at this time.
This method will give our study legitimacy in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of congress, who depend on the public for voting. I highly doubt a heritage society did a public assessment or reached out to the public in their review, so basically, we'll get our study, that added legitimacy that we involved the public opinion. And then, come election time, the public will play a role in the political evaluation of the heritage societies policy suggestions. And we'll also ask the public to consider who the heritage society is serving in trying to overturn these important policies. The courts finally ruled that the BP oil spill was the result of gross negligence and so we can ask, are these the types of behaviors the heritage society thinks we no longer need to regulate against.
OK. Third component, we're going to play the business community into the heritage society by holding an administrative review of the EPA. They are arguing against the efficiency of the program. The EPA has had some organizational problems in the last few decades, so we're going to go ahead and help them out with that and also better-- organize better [? about ?] EPA is good for everybody. And that will satisfy the business community, also, to have some of that what they see as wasteful practices reduced.
Our fourth review method, like I said, is to involve the Justice Department and I'll remind you again of the instance of the judge releasing the environmental activists who blocked the coal barge. So the Justice Department, as a whole, we think should take a stand on this issue of the right to clean air and water, so we're requesting a judicial review of the constitutionality of removing [INAUDIBLE] policies designed to protect the people and the environment. So in conclusion, I agree with you, secretary, that the study by the heritage society is bogus and we need to organize our own review of command control policies that highlight their value.
PROFESSOR: Thank you.