The latest air quality data released by the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may call into question the stated goals of the agency’s recently proposed environmental regulations, which will force the State of Alabama to cut power plant carbon emissions by roughly 30 percent by 2030.

A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce predicts the mandates will cost the United States more than 220,000 jobs over the next several years.

According to the study, the proposed regulations will have a disproportionate impact on southern states, where energy costs will jump by $6.6 billion per year over the next decade-and-a-half. The “East-South-Central” region of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky would see its GDP shrink by an estimated $2.2 billion and could lose 21,400 jobs as a result of the plan.

Advocates of the regulations say the environmental benefits far outweigh the immediate and significant economic costs.

But as the regulations shutter coal plants all over the United States and electricity production capacity decreases — as we’ve already seen in neighboring Georgia — the country will have to turn to other nations for our power generation needs. In simple terms, the EPA’s regulations will undoubtedly decrease fossil fuel power generation in the U.S., but that will in turn help nations like China, who will increase their production and sell it back to the United States.

As the graph below shows, air quality in the United States — even in the smoggiest, most polluted cities — is far superior to the air quality all over China. And in Alabama, where the impact of the administration’s “war on coal” is already been felt, are quality is even better.

So if the EPA’s actual goals are to improve air quality and curtail man-made global warming, it does not seem to make sense to implement policies that not only damage the U.S. economy, but also result in increased production in parts of the world where there are essentially no environmental regulations whatsoever.

As famed economist Milton Friedman once said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

Even if you believe the EPA’s intentions are sincere, it is still hard to see how their plan will come anywhere close to achieving the desired results.

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