Environmentalism Creates Jobs

Often political discourse breaks sown, when both sides resort to
platitudes.  This is true especially when the debate is
carried out on the basis of deeply-held generalizations.  This
is especially true when empirical evidence is not
taken into account.



It often is argued that environmentalism is bad, and environmentalists
are bad, because pro-environment policies are bad for the economy, and
environmentalists are anti-growth, whatever that means.



Environmentalists counter by saying that good policy is made by
weighing the risks and the benefits.  



That does not help much, because everyone ascribes different weights to
the various elements of a proposed policy, but at least it is a
starting point for discussion.  



Environmentalists tend to think it is reasonable to expect everyone to
be responsible for their own trash, including the byproducts of
industrial processes.  Some others think that a little trash
doesn't hurt, or at least the costs of dealing with the trash outweigh
the benefits.



I was going to turn this into a diatribe about the superiority of
reality-based versus faith-based reasoning, but decided that would be
boring; it would be too abstract.



Instead, let us look at a specific example.

href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/business/10diesel.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1163183462-2NHXduqlm4tGzBsOXKLrsQ&oref=slogin">Turning
Toughened Rules Into an Advantage

By FELICITY BARRINGER


Published: November 10, 2006

COLUMBUS, Ind. — Executives at href="http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=CMI"
title="Cummins Inc.">Cummins Inc. did not expect
their blessings to come in disguise, particularly when they were
disguised as government regulations.

So, when engineers at Cummins, a diesel engine maker, first saw the
suggested new federal clean-air standards for their engines in the
early 1990s, they argued that the standards would be impossible to meet.



After the standards became official in 2000, Cummins sued, and industry
insiders started placing bets on whether the company would be one of
the few to meet the technical challenges — and survive.



But in October, when the Environmental Protection Agency needed a place
to trumpet the success of the standards, it came here, to
Cummins’s headquarters. A day after the E.P.A. event, Cummins
followed with more good news, announcing that it would invest $250
million to revive a partly idled plant and hire 600 workers to build
state-of-the-art light duty diesel engines.



What had changed at Cummins, and at other diesel engine manufacturers,
was not just that they had learned to adapt to tougher environmental
regulations. Instead, the new, cleaner engines have become a point of
pride...

It turns out that it is not just Cummins that has benefited; there has
been an "unexpected industry revival."

...Indeed, Cummins, along with companies like
Caterpillar, has led an unexpected industry revival.
“Columbus, Peoria, these were all supposed to become ghost
towns,” Mr. Osega added. “But this whole industry
has prospered. Cummins is a microcosm of what the industry is going
through.”



The main market in the United States for diesel engines remains trucks
and heavy equipment for construction, mining and off-road
transportation, like locomotive engines. But new engines, with
pollution-control technology, open the way for more diesel-powered
light trucks and sport utility vehicles...

This could serve as a lesson to both sides of the debate.  The
fact is, you need to look at the available information, when
formulating policy.  



The remainder of the article shows how the interrelationships between
government regulation, the energy industry, and the manufacturing
industry, all were important to consider.  In this particular
case, it was possible to get an improved environmental outcome as well
as economic benefit.