Lisa Jackson wrote an op ed piece in today's WSJ, extolling the EPA and the wonderful things it has wrought. Among other things, she claims that EPA and other regulations have created 1.5 million jobs in what she calls the "environmental protection industry."
I can reduce unemployment easily. I can put two people at every cash register instead of one, and thereby cut the unemployment rate dramatically. But have I done anything worthwhile? No, because I've reduced productivity, and what I need to do to really solve the unemployment problem is increase productivity. When FDR put all those people to work on public works projects, the aggregate wealth of the country was increased, because they were improving roads and bridges and other infrastructure. (Whether we got the right amount of bang for the buck can be debated, but not the fundamental idea.) Employing lots of people to do environmental analyses, prepare impact statements, protect endangered species, figure out how to reduce stack emissions, etc., may or may not have a socially useful purpose, but together all that work reduces productivity. The fact that many people are employed doing it is no different than my idea of putting two people at every cash register. Trying to justify environmental regulation on economic grounds is impossible; it's simply an attempt to disguise the economic impact.
The "green energy" movement is one of the worst manifestations of this subterfuge. Every unit of energy produced by wind or solar increases the cost of energy production, which is why government subsidies are required. If you think the world must be saved from pollution, fine. But stop trying to say it's good economics. It's not.
No comments:
Post a Comment