An interesting question has been posed by the National Environmental Trust: Is your member of Congress more interested in protecting the health of average Americans or in protecting the profits of 13 big utility companies?

President Bush has already answered that question, siding with utilities.

On Friday, he eased clean air standards for energy plants, allowing utilities, refineries and manufacturers to forego installing pricey anti-pollution equipment on emission stacks when they upgrade their plants.

This “new flexibility” offered to Cinergy Corp., American Electric Power, FirstEnergy Corp., Duke Energy and other major polluters will not, according to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman, produce dirtier air. In fact, it might even encourage polluters to reduce emissions voluntarily.

Wrong.

If given a choice, these polluters, already in violation of clean air rules, will not install new equipment if they can avoid it because it will cut into profits. And they are, after all, in business to make money.

Protecting the industry — also known as guarding profit — has been the argument polluters have used for decades to fight strict air standards. Americans are high energy users and these power plants produce a product we willingly buy. The public demand for energy would be harmed, these polluters say, if they are forced to install expensive anti-pollution equipment.

Substitute cars for energy, and we have the same sorry excuse the automobile industry used to fight congressional efforts to reduce vehicle emissions decades ago. It took congressional will, with Maine’s Ed Muskie in the lead, to force the industry to accept clean air standards.

As a result, the auto industry not only survived, it thrived.

Although the power industry argues profit and demand to justify continued pollution, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has it right. “This issue is literally a matter of life and death” because pollution causes respiratory illnesses and is responsible for thousands of premature deaths, especially in the Northeast.

Mainers, with the nation’s highest incidence of adult-onset asthma, know the suffering firsthand. Because of the way the air flows across this country, we are at the figurative exhaust pipe of the nation. The pollution created in the midwest flows through our skies and dumps its poison on our people.

Sen. Olympia Snowe knows that and has vowed to fight the rollback on standards.

We need a modern-day Muskie, and she’s a good candidate. Others must quickly fall behind her lead if we are to reverse the president’s unequitable position.

It isn’t as if the EPA doesn’t recognize the threat of pollution. The agency recently issued new emission standards for snowmobiles, forcing a reduction in hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions by 30 percent by 2006.

Snowmobile manufacturers have balked, saying it will make their product more expensive as they are forced to come up with new technology to comply with these restrictions. But the EPA won’t back down.

Why is it wrong for snowmobilers to pollute, but OK for energy plants? Could it have something to do with the $4.1 million in campaign contributions made by power companies during the 2002 election cycle? And if it does, is that any way to write public policy?

No.

jmeyer@sunjournal.com