I quote from this Fortune Magazine piece by contributor Mindy Lubber.
Clean policies not only offer necessary protections, they stimulate jobs.
Quite simply, the naysayers are wrong on clean tech potential—and here’s why:
From Scotland to Shanghai to Sao Paolo, the world is moving decisively toward a clean technology conversion and the jobs that come with it for urgent environmental, security and competitiveness reasons.
It’s all about market share: Do we wish to trade our dependence on imported and dirty energy for a new dependence on non-domestic clean technologies? Or would we rather innovate 21st century technologies ourselves and sell them to the world?
It’s all about market share - the world is moving towards green technologies. Those who resist environmental regulation here are missing the boat on what may well be the next big economic opportunity. They are crippling those who could contribute jobs and wealth to our country. They are continuing to damage our environment, but also our economic future and our energy security.
And the naysayers are flat out wrong on both real costs and real benefits:
Opponents of new environmental technologies and policies have repeatedly been wildly inaccurate in their cost claims. As one of many examples, in 1981 the Business Roundtable estimated that compliance with the Clean Air Act would cost $66 billion annually over six years. In 1990, they estimated further compliance costs at $55 billion annually. Yet in 1997, EPA reported the actual cost of the CAA compliance over its first 20 years at just $26 billion a year. And that doesn’t count the vastly-larger health and environmental gains.
It should be a no-brainer, except that those opposing really have no brains. They also have no hearts.
Here's Lubber's conclusion:
The 21st Century global economy will inevitably be powered by clean tech, and the millions of jobs it spawns elsewhere if not here. It’s past time to get moving on the policies we need to nurture it.
If we are really so concerned about jobs, we should be moving towards clean tech, towards green jobs, towards less destructive technologies and patterns of energy. How much more productive economically and safer environmentally such an approach would be instead of the stupid and ecologically disastrous Keystone Pipeline.
Too bad the decision makers don't have the sense of Mindy Lubber.