Have you noticed the deafening

silence of the Sierra Club and the federal Environmental Protection Agency

concerning Hartsfield Airport's fifth runway?

The Sierra Club, a huge, nationwide

group of environmental activists/lobbyists, has spent untold amounts of

money over the last couple of years and caused the state to spend quite

handsomely as well in legal attempts to keep roads from being built in

the Atlanta area.

The arguments sound amazingly

reasonable, and go something like this: The air in the Atlanta area does

not meet federal quality standards, and too many people driving cars too

many miles is at least a major contributing factor. The state and local

governments have responded to increasing traffic by building too many

roads and have not provided enough alternative transportation options

to reduce pollution. Therefore, the governments should not be allowed

to build anymore roads until they come up with a plan to provide more

trains, subways, buses and bike paths so that the air quality standards

are met.

After losing the latest lawsuit

recently, a Sierra Club spokesman went onto a panel TV show and repeated

several times that the state needs to come up with a transportation plan

that meets air quality standards.

Again, that sounds reasonable.

But there's a giant flaw, a catch 22. The transportation plan that would

cause Atlanta's air to meet the federal standards is an impossibility.

You could pass a law today that provides the death penalty for increasing

the number of cars on our roads, and you could plow up half of the roads

and put subway stations every half mile on every thoroughfare in the entire

13-county region, and we still wouldn't meet the air quality standards.

Setting aside, for now, the

fact that the standards themselves are flawed and based on voodoo environmentalism,

two major culprits in the Atlanta area's air quality are sacred cows that

will defeat any effort to create cleaner air: the area's abundant plant

life, and Hartsfield Airport.

Don't start throwing eggs.

It's true. People have asthma and other respiratory problems because of

the intense concentration of pollen. When other regions of the country

are whining about high pollen counts, like 250, our counts are running

three or four thousand. That's why the environmentalists' use of statistics

on the number of asthma cases and other respiratory problems as proof

of air quality problems is so ridiculous.

Why do you think Doc Holliday

went west?

Perhaps the Sierra Club should

file suit against the metro counties that have tree protection ordinances.

Hartsfield is the other big

contributor. Don't misunderstand ... the airport is revered as a dynamic

economic generator for the south side, and nobody wants it to go away.

But further expansion is environmentally, socially, economically insane.

It's time for this 500-pound

canary to lose some weight.

The federal Environmental Protection

Agency proved its great love of the environment by forcing Georgia to

create a huge bureaucracy (GRTA) designed to spend a boat load of money

without actually doing anything. EPA delayed approval of road-building

plans and made the state jump through all sorts of hoops to finally get

a transportation plan approved.

But EPA approved the fifth

runway with barely a raised eyebrow at the additional pollution that will

bring.

And now Atlanta wants to add

3,000 more feet, which will multiply the ill effects exponentially. And

EPA will approve that, too, with nary a stumbling block, you watch.

The solution, of course, is

to build another airport somewhere else, preferably the north side, and

cut back on the number of flights out of Hartsfield.

Not likely? Agreed.

But if the Sierra Club is sincere

about wanting to improve air quality in the region and not just getting

high on the power of being able to force people to change their life-styles,

the very least it could do is stand behind the folks in south Fulton who

are trying to stop the extension of the fifth runway.

Cleaner, more breathable air,

is a worthy goal, and if we provide more trains and subways, maybe eventually

people will actually choose to use them, and that will certainly help

move us toward that goal.

But if we want to make real

progress, we're going to have to carve up that sacred cow.