"More Pollution Won't Solve Our Jobs Problem" - Paul Krugman.
CONGRESS and President Obama were wrong to say we can not afford pollution regulation now. The regulation is based on the fact that pollution costs money and lives. Upgrading plants creates jobs and provides savings to the public. Electricity from old coal fired plants always has hidden costs that "tax" us with pollution that kills crops, poisons land, rivers, and fish with mercury. Not fixing pollution saves money and eliminates jobs, while the public continues to pay the costs associated with pollution.
Reducing the costs of pollution can save us $1 trillion in ten years. In explaining the deal, President Obama was silent about the costs being imposed daily by pollution, Silence can be a lie. Cleaning up the environment creates savings that exceed t the costs to make the upgrades. You won't see any of this if the facts are hidden from you. Reducing pollution from coal is not free and makes non-polluting sources attractive. That is what the coal-fired industry objects to.
INDUSTRY is responsible to investors and no one else. Rather than protect voters, Congress has failed to ensure that the long recognized costs imposed on the public be accurately quantified, apparently feeling that the exposure of the real costs will inevitably lead to the voters insisting on proper regulation.
OUR best guide for public policy is a study that has been done of costs of pollution: "Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy" [1] by Nicholas Z. Muller, Robert Mendelsohn, and William Nordhaus. We need to know the costs, to design appropriate regulation or taxes. We want every industry to be on a level playing field, denying any benefit those industries that burden us and our children with pollution.
Table 1 from [1] showing gross external damages (GED) in billions of dollars and GED value added (VA) ratio (multiply by 100 for percent):
| Sector | GED (B) | GED/VA |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture and forestry | 32.0 | 0.38 |
| Utilities | 62.6 | 0.34 |
| Transportation | 23.2 | 0.10 |
| Admin, waste mngnt,remediation svcs | 10.7 | 0.08 |
| Construction | 14.7 | 0.03 |
| Art, entertainment, and recreation | 2.2 | 0.03 |
| Accommodation and food services | 4.2 | 0.02 |
| Mining | 3.3 | 0.02 |
| Manufacturing | 26.4 | 0.01 |
NOTE the top two sectors show a recurring cost to the public of $94 billion each year, while the costs the industry claims are one-time costs, and industry has a very poor record of predicting the costs of regulation, habitually estimating the costs at two or three times the worst case. From economist Paul Krugman, "it turns out that there are a number of industries inflicting environmental damage that's worth more than the sum of the wages they pay and the profits they earn - which means, in effect, that they destroy value rather than create it. High on the list, by the way, is coal-fired electricity generation" [2]).
. TODAY (16 Nov. 20011) it was reported that Obama has "decided against ratcheting up the ozone rule because of the cost and the uncertainty it would impose on industry and local governments."[3] "This was the worst thing a Democratic president had ever done on our issues," said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. "Period." [3]The worst
things that Obama has done are actually more than one, but they each have one common element; consideration of the costs to business or that taxes might need to be raised on the wealthy, but no consideration of the continuing cost to the public. Look at the unrecognized costs of utilities above, 34% of the cost they charge for their products, is waste dumped on the public. If they had to pay for trash disposal, they would never fail to include that in their costs, but Obama and congress have failed to. Business must compete on all costs, including health, not just the ones they can't dump onto the public.
Harrison Picot
Independent candidate for Congress in Virginia's 10th district
[1] http://www.aeaweb.org/atypon.php?return_to=/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.101.5.1649
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