Today we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and later this year we will mark the 40th birthday of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and 40 years of the remarkably successful Clean Air Act. The suite of environmental protections that took shape in 1970, along with a sweeping Clean Water Act in 1972, remain some of the most effective policies in our history.
What is sometimes less noticed is that those actions were about more than environmental protection. They also represented an economic philosophy, a belief that American industries could continue to expand and innovate without jeopardizing our health and welfare. And it worked. Despite the overheated rhetoric we often hear today about runaway environmental regulations killing jobs, our history is one of healthier families, cleaner communities -- and, yes, job-creating innovation and a stronger America.
Forty years of environmental action have meant cleaner air in our cities and safe water in our homes. These changes have made our communities healthier, reducing exposure to pollution that causes cancer, heart disease and respiratory illness -- three of the top four deadliest conditions in our country. And they've made our economy stronger by giving cities and towns what they need to attract new residents and new jobs.
What also took place during those same four decades of environmental progress was the rise of a world-leading environmental technology industry. In 2007 environmental firms and small businesses in the US generated $282 billion in revenues and $40 billion in exports, and supported 1.6 million American jobs. That number doesn't include all the engineers and professional services firms that support those businesses.
This industry has also created cutting-edge innovations and technologies to meet new environmental and health standards. One powerful example is the catalytic converter. When EPA used the Clean Air Act to phase in unleaded gas and catalytic converters in the early seventies, major automakers fought it. The Chamber of Commerce claimed "entire industries might collapse" as a result. But today, lead pollution in our air is 92 percent lower than it was in 1980. Emissions of dangerous air pollutants that cause smog, acid rain, and more have been cut by more than half. And in the same period, our gross domestic product grew by 126 percent. Rather than hurting the economy, American innovators and entrepreneurs found ways to produce and sell more cars without increasing pollution that threatened our cities and caused costly and often deadly health problems for Americans.
At a time of historic economic difficulty, the Obama administration has sought out similar opportunities to improve our economy by protecting our environment. In a groundbreaking step in our work against climate change, President Obama formed an alliance with American automakers to set aggressive emissions standards for American cars and light trucks. The next generation of clean cars will protect our health and environment and keep almost a billion tons of carbon pollution out of our skies. At the same time, they will benefit American drivers and reduce our dependence on foreign oil by billions of dollars.
Notwithstanding periods of difficulty, the last 40 years have seen steady improvements in the health of both our environment and our economy. Progress on both fronts has been driven by smart environmental policies that keep us healthy, strengthen our communities, and foster industry innovation. Looking ahead to the next 40 years, it is clear we must continue on the same path. Sustainability and planetary stewardship must be part of the economic growth that is reaching more and more people around the world every day. Without protections for the water, air and land that communities depend on, our economic horizons are limited. Without innovations like clean energy and energy efficiency, the global economy will be running on empty within our lifetimes.
Our economy and our environment are inextricably linked. If we want forty more years of American leadership in the global marketplace, then there is no choosing one or the other. The first generation of Earth Day leaders understood that truth. Our generation can set in motion four more decades of prosperity by insisting today that our economic and environmental interests work hand in hand.
My company has a Triple Bottom Line philosophy http://www.capsicumpro.com/sustainability.html
A profit only driven company will always tax the environment and exploit people. I think in order for real change to happen we have to change the consumer ideology...
www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2261031/chinese-government-renewables
b) While Sweden's dropped its greenhouse gas emissions 14% since the 1990 Kyoto Accords, its GDP has nearly doubled. Germany, with the strictest environmental/GHG regs in Europe, now has the world's 4th largest economy, while more than doubling its GDP.
www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/7204/fromdepartment/7204/page/4
www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:DEU&dl=en&hl=en&q=german+gdp#met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:SWE
So, saying going green will kill our economy is RUBBISH!
Meanwhile, we're
c) 38th in life expectancy, just 2 years ahead of MEXICO. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
d) 18th among 36 industrialized nations in education.
www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/11/19/US-slipping-in-education-rankings/UPI-90221227104776/
e) DEAD LAST in TRADE BALANCE ~$730 Billion deficit, $585 Billion behind Spain.
China and Germany's surpluses are $352 and $252 Billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_current_account_balance
f) 12 western hemisphere countries have universal health care, including Cuba and Trinidad; 30 in Asia; nearly all of Europe. WE DON'T.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care
Are we COMPETITORS OR QUITTERS?
It's time we just ignore the useless naysayers, roll up our sleeves, and get to work!
By producing domestic energy, which also can be cleaner and greener than good old petroleum, we're doing ourselves a double favor by dumping less gunk into the atmosphere, as well as making headway on the economic tar pit we seem to be in these days, which has no small amount to do with the half-trillion or so dollars it's estimated that this country spends on imported oil, annually. Annually. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.$$ Be it for eco-grooviness, or American energy and economic independence from OPEC et. al., 'green' tech is good juju, I think.
rooftop pv solar is already 3-6 cents per KWH.
Green energy is already over 1% of total energy.
in just 12 years, green energy can replace fossil and nukes.
Cheaper, faster, cleaner, and safer, than ANY OTHER ENERGY PLAN.
Point of use solutions within the built environment will easily, cleanly and extremely cheaply get us to 50% clean power in a matter of only a few years if you just set up PACE loans and pay us for producing more power than we use. It's already working in 45 countries! What we cannot forgive is massive ecosystem slaughter for Big Energy profits - and that is EXACTLY what Big Solar and Big Wind are, there is nothing "renewable" about these boondoggles which cannot even "break even" on their own emissions before they are de-comissioned (leaving blighted wastelands where beautiful, healthy habitat once was). Concrete, steel, glass, water waste, burning gas, SF6, beneficial species deaths, construction emissions and destruction of carbon-sequestering ecosystems ARE NOT A PLAN TO HELP THE PLANET OR THE ECONOMY.
We should be the ones owning and operating the renewable energy revolution, from our homes and businesses, and seeing the environmental and financial rewards. NO BIG ENERGY, NO BIG BANKS!
This waste of billions of gallons of fresh water, and wholesale and permanent contamination of our nation's aquifers runs counter to all our environmental efforts of the last 40 years. Ms. Jackson, it's time to put the EPA back in the driver's seat on this one, rein in this industry, and protect our number one most valuable resource.
Removing mountaintops; poisoning the land and the water of people who live near the coal companies;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGd9D4J0lag
How about atrazine in our water? Atrazine is outlawed in Europe because of severe birth defects in various species, especially the alteration of gender.
How about the fact that the EPA continues to allow poisons like the weed-killer Round-Up to remain on the market? People think that the run-off from the pesticides they use gets somehow filtered before traveling out to sea. It doesn't. It goes straight out into our oceans and is killing marine life. Not to mention the ecosystems in our own backyards.
How about factory farming? The poisoning and abuse of the animals? The subsequent consumption of poison-laced meat products by the American people?
The list of such poisons circulating in our environment is long (over 80,000 of them--all of which did not exist before the 1950s). And they are there because the EPA allows them to be there.
There is no protection for the environment in the U.S. There is merely protection for corporate interests. Americans are finally beginning to catch on. And we are no longer interested in calm-the-masses bromide essays. We've seen behind the curtain. The jig, as they say, is up.
http://www.amazon.com/Bridge-Edge-World-Environment-Sustainability/dp/0300151152/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272006147&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Progress-Toward-Sustainable-Future/dp/1584654953/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272005165&sr=1-1
There's lots of hubub these days about free market and government intrusion.
What the free market worshipers refuse to see is that free market WILL NOT provide clean air and water.
Of what ?
In addition, California is losing business and jobs at a mugh higher rate than most other states and "enjoys" having one of the highest unemployment rates in the country partly due to it's ever increasing environmental regulation and high taxes to pay for them.
The article was not particularly good, but *without adopting the philosophy* it is still important to remind people that, for example, the destruction of the horse-and-buggy industry at the hands of the automobile did not hurt America any more than will the abandonment of old technology today in favor of new. That's NOT the basis on which we should adopt it, I agree, but it's still a sadly necessary and persuasive argument to too many people. Until we convince the general population to reject economics and dollar-value as the determinants of right thought and action, we will need to make arguments like this over and over.
Thanks for your comment.
We must have ever-increasing standard of living.
There's no concept in the American psyche of doing with less, or doing without.
One day we'll be forced to learn those concepts.