Climate Change -- conspiracy theory or is it time we all drive a Prius?

Quote: rxwine

I suppose we should account for the fact that China has 3 times our population.

Quote: rxwine

I suppose we should account for the fact that China has 3 times our population.

Quote: missedhervee

Nero fiddled while Rome burned;

Ursus sleeps while the ice melts.

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numerous studies show that protecting the environment is not bad for the economy. In the 1980s—soon after landmark federal statutes such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were passed—some studies suggested that the economic slowdown in that decade was caused by environmental legislation.

But better, larger and longer-term studies completed since then have refuted that claim. For example, one study found that productivity at stringently regulated oil refineries in the heavily controlled Los Angeles air basin increased during the study period—1987 to 1992—whereas refinery productivity decreased in other regions. A recent review of the peer-reviewed literature concluded that “environmental regulations have had very little effect on employment in the regulated industry.” In other words, environmental protection does not kill jobs.

What is more, many environmentally destructive jobs are notoriously short-lived. Mineral extraction is famously associated with boom-and-bust economics—think “gold rush”—and several studies have shown that the fracking “boom” of the early 2000s has already gone bust. In his 2021 book, Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town, Colin Jerolmack reports that the actual number of jobs that were created by the industry was often far less than claimed, and many of them proved ephemeral. The Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative found that “firms with an economic interest in the expansion of drilling” and their allies systematically exaggerated its impact on employment.

For instance, in 2012 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce claimed that fracking in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia had created more than 300,000 new jobs. But the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry counted only about 18,000 in core industries and about 5,600 in ancillary industries, and according to the nonprofit Ohio River Valley Institute, little of the income they generated stayed in local communities. In contrast, environmental restoration creates jobs in projects that typically employ local laborers, use mostly local materials and, because they support tourism and recreation, often yield durable benefits.

Environmental protection is also good for public health, which in turn is good for the economy, because sick people generally can’t work well and sometimes can’t work at all. A study published in the journal Science last November estimated that nearly half a million deaths in the U.S. could be attributed to fine particulate air pollutants from coal-fired power plants between 1999 and 2020.