The Predictions of Those Who Oppose Environmental Regulation Have Been Dead Wrong

Here’s an article that speaks to two basic truths on our discourse on the environment, at least here in the U.S.:

a) those who favor protecting our skies and oceans are uniformly opposed by critics who have consistently predicted that such regulation would cripple the economy, and

b) these predictions, historically, have uniformly proven to be incorrect. 

In addition to the examples the author cites re: the Environmental Protection Agency, it’s worth noting that this basic drama occurs in many business arenas; it’s not limited to energy and the environment.  We all remember the pushback that consumer safety advocates received from the auto industry surrounding the introduction of seatbelts in the early 1960s.  The industry screamed, “You need to trust us, we’re on your side, but seatbelts won’t save lives!  Nobody wants them! Drivers and passengers will refuse to wear them! Most important of all, the added expense will positively ruin America’s most important and job-intensive industry!”  Did any of this happen when government finally signed the seatbelt bill into law?  Of course not.

Then we saw the whole argument play itself out again with anti-lock braking, airbags, and on and on.

Here we are in the 21st Century, contemplating a new approach to energy.  And surprise, surprise: the fossil fuel companies are assuring us that our economy will go to hell in a hand-basket if we relax our pursuit of extracting the last molecule of coal, oil, and natural gas from the Earth’s crust.  But we’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends; we’ve heard the “boy crying wolf” here too many times.

We need to ask ourselves, as we think about our approach to migrating from fossil fuels in the direction of clean energy: is the renewable energy industry really a job killer? Isn’t it possible (in fact, pretty-much assured) that keeping pace — or even leading the world — in the development of new energy solutions will actually be a tremendous boon to the U.S. economy?

We need to thank the fossil fuel industry most kindly and sincerely for what it meant to us in the 20th Century.  Let’s acknowledge that much of the prosperity we enjoyed has come from this incredible phenomenon.  But now we also must politely request (or impolitely, if need be), that the fossil fuel boys grasp the realities of living on a small planet, that they step aside, and let this great nation find its way to its new manifest destiny, i.e., leading the world in clean energy–the discipline that is clearly emerging as the defining industry in the 21st Century.