This just in, by e-mail from Senator Barbara Boxer:

Recently, it was discovered that the Environmental Protection Agency appears to have lowered the statistical value of a human life from $7.8 million per life five years ago to $6.9 million today. This recalculation of almost $1 million per life can have grave consequences for a range of environmental analyses and cost/benefit comparisons.

The EPA’s decision to reduce the value of a human life when it considers the benefits of new environmental regulations is outrageous and must be reversed. EPA may not think Americans are worth all that much, but the rest of us believe the value of an American life to our families, our communities, our workplaces and our nation is no less than it has ever been.

This new math has got to go. If these reports are confirmed, I will be introducing legislation to reverse this unconscionable decision at the earliest opportunity because it will lead to far weaker pollution protections for us and our families.

This is pure insanity. That anyone keeps such numbers is bizarre, and that Senator Boxer thinks the issue even merits contemplation is sad.

Money is an abstraction, a contrivance, a mere material means to an end. It is the sand on which the house of society is built. Society is a house of sugar in the path of a squall. A human life, or any number of them, does not exist in the same category of Being as money, or things of any kind. Life is an entirely different realm than stuff.

You can’t put a value on life, any more than you can find God with a telescope. It makes as much sense to say that a nickel is too much to pay for a life, as that a planet is payment too small. Because human life is sacred, standing in the corporeal but reaching for the divine.