The old canard jobs versus the environment is such a bunch of bullshit as if jobs have been added by polluting industries.
The fact of the matter remains that corporations are looking to cut cost, and labor is the first to go along with waste management. If they can get away with it they flush their waste into the water, and air and look the other way. There's more profit if you do not have to actually hire people to install the clean up devices or do the job of the actual clean up, and more profit if you are somehow not responsible for the waste, mess, toxins that are a byproduct of your particular industry from cigarette filters to nuclear waste, and do not have to clean up after yourself.
Mountain top removal and the coal industry comes to mind. The coal industry are uber polluters, and the first ones to justify their reckless pollution by campaigning that environmental clean up responsibilities hurt job creation.
Jobs versus the environment. Its total bullshit and in fact the opposite is the truth. Lets look at it logically and look at what has really happened after decades of the "jobs versus the environment" chant and mantra of the dirty energy industry.
So big coal gets all sorts of legislative favors. The EPA is instructed to look the other way and laws go unenforced or even repealed all because of the "jobs versus the environment" chant. So what happened did the coal industry hire thousands of people for the right to pollute our water streams, destroy our eco-system and spew toxins into the air? For all the environmental forgiving we have done the coal industry actually CUT jobs.
That's right. They didn't hire more workers they fired massive numbers of coal miners and devised new cheaper ways to get at the coal lines. What new super efficient technology did they invent? They devised to lay off coal miners and just blow the tops of the mountains clear off and dump the debris into the valleys destroying homes, vistas, fauna and becoming even more offensive environmentally by heaping even more devastation onto the environment.
They actually increased their pollution liability.
The next time someone says jobs versus the environment holler bullshit right in their face. Because what industry really wants is less labor "and" less environmental liability and responsibility, because their goal is not to provide jobs but to provide profit.
If industry including coal was environmentally responsible, decreased their environmental liability by cleaning it up instead of buying legislation to avoid that responsibility, and actually cleaned up after itself it would require MAN POWER to do that job.
Like wise the switch to a green energy industry format requires MAN POWER to retrofit the transmission lines and build the new infrastructure.
Paying for that MANPOWER cuts into the bottom line of their quarterly reports and profit margins.
And since no one industry calculates profit on a macro-economic scale they never take into account what all the MANPOWER hired would do for the nation as a whole.
You and I know because we are not so concerned with one industries profit margins. We as a nation and a people are concerned with jobs, their availability, how much they pay and can we survive on them while living in this country. That's not industries concern which means whats good for GM - lower pay, fewer workers isn't necessarily good for the country.
In fact whats good for industry is bad for the country. The lack of oversight, the lack of regulation, the lack of a livable wage all increase corporate profit but DESTROY our Country from sea to shining sea.
Industry doesn't want to hire more MANPOWER because it cuts into their profit.
Industry wants to eliminate everything they can including manpower, and planetary discipline because it cuts into the profits they receive from making goods and services. The polluting byproduct of those goods and services are not profitable so if they can walk away from them or wash them downstream or make the tax payers responsible for the clean up then they get to pay themselves more money. Your health and the devastation of someone else's industry or livelihood is your tough shit. That's no way to run a civilization.
So lets understand once and for all protecting the environment creates jobs. Regulation creates jobs because it requires MANPOWER. The struggle today as it has always been is profit over responsibility.
Polluted waters down stream are the responsibility of the offending industry whether its big agriculture, coal, nuclear, oil, gas or pharmaceutical. That's right there are pharmaceuticals coursing through the water supply and food supply as well.
What we lack in all of our business and governing models is PLANETARY DISCIPLINE. We harvest what the planet has to offer in a mad frenzy for a quick buck, but we don't protect and provide for that very foundation that gives us our natural resources in the first place. We don't have the right mindset (greed and a quick buck) or there would never be an overfishing issue, or clear cutting issues or even issues regarding wildlife as they are an integral part in maintaining the environment.
Why do we not understand that the planet is our home base in which everything springs from and returns. We can not pollute, devastate, lay barren the air, water and food supply without without polluting, devastating and laying barren ourselves.
We have to have discipline when it comes to commerce and industry not only toward the bottom line but towards that to which we harvest, and live upon.
Look at all the examples of unregulated profit seeking around the world from Hatti to Somalia to Easter Island to the global fiscal meltdown. When unregulated, un-managed harvest of natural resources strips out the timber, depletes the fishing and ruins the air there is disaster, flooding and ruin on a global scale.
We can not continue to pump mercury, dioxins, and alter the genetics of our farming and food supply without consequences coming home to roost in our own body and in our own economy.
Planetary discipline is needed to frame every decision. Would the coal companies have gone ahead with mountain top removal if they knew they were going to be responsible for cleaning up the valleys? Would they continue to pump all that mercury into the air if they knew they would be responsible for global warming, the downwind asthma and health ramifications they have caused? If the coal industry operated under the assumption that they were responsible for the waste that they created they wouldn't create so much of it, and that truth holds true for every industry. What they spend in lobbying to avoid their responsibility would more than fix the problem in the first place, but they are stuck in an adversarial mindset.
We need to factor in planetary discipline into our hunt for profit. That discipline will create jobs and enable the middle class to support the overall economy.
Without planetary discipline, and integrity for ones own actions there are fewer jobs created and economic collapse.
The old canard jobs versus the environment has it exactly backwards.
It's the environment that creates the jobs industry is just the middle man.
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