Green jobbery

National Review, Dec 14, 1992

BRETT HULSEY, environmental-policy advisor to President-elect Clinton, told a recent conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists that "the electorate proved we don't have to choose between the environment and jobs." That reminds us of a new Australian prime minister who, on being told by an aide that one of his campaign brainstorms flew in the face of the law of supply and demand, declared: "Then we'll just have to repeal that law. We have a mandate to do it."

Clinton's green aide, a former Sierra Club representative, told the conference that his new boss has tougher anti-pollution standards "on the top of his agenda"--up there with infrastructure--and that his new approach to the environment will create a whole host of extra jobs.

Of course you can "create" tens of thousands of jobs with almost any government initiative if you are completely unconcerned about whether those jobs are productive jobs, about how they are financed, and about the consequences for the rest of the economy. The environment can provide the political justification for whole new armies of inspectors to supervise recycling, waste disposal, ozone depletion, global-warming gases, toxic materials, water pollution, and all the rest. If only the EPA had the manpower to prosecute the cases, it could incarcerate thousands of environmental "criminals." For instance, only a handful of scoundrels like John Pozsgai and Bill Ellen are currently serving time for the awful crime of dumping soil in their own swampland.

VP-elect Al Gore's contribution to this environmental-job-creation brainstorming has been to propose that new technology be vetted for its environmental impact. Given that hundreds of thousands of production engineers, designers, and managers--as well as all the independent inventors and tinkerers out there--are changing the design and manufacture of products every day, a system to vet "technological change" would exhaust even the most ambitious bureaucratic empire-builders. Such systems of regulation invariably err on the side of caution, weighing risks more heavily than benefits--as AIDS sufferers can attest from the FDA's reluctance to permit potential therapies to be used even by terminally ill patients.

Would the Environmental Impact Technology Review Board (EITRB) ever have allowed the introduction of the automobile, the airplane, or penicillin? We can imagine the powerful arguments that could have been made against allowing the use of electric power if America during Thomas Edison's time had been afflicted by an EITRB. But such a board would have created plentiful jobs for technology-judging attorneys.

The Joint Economic Committee of the Congress released on November 7 a devastating paper, "Derailing the Small Business Job Express," which examines regulation's job-destroying record over the past four years. It points out that tens of thousands of small firms--bakeries, gas stations, restaurants, auto-body shops, small print shops, dry cleaners, and the like--are being "strangled by green tape." Simply getting EPA permits to operate under new Clean Air Act rules has been estimated to cost $16,000 for typical firms. Gillespie's report adds: "Given the small size of these [business] operations, CAAA [clean air act amendment] related costs in the tens of thousands of dollars will be sufficient to sink many firms, and will have severe impacts on their ability to employ workers." The Clintonians threaten to "do more" for the environment than Mr. Bush. We fear they are sincere.

Goodbye to All That

Mr. Weinberger's due to be tried For the notes he unwisely denied

As a pardon recedes Like a snake through the weeds And the President ebbs like the tide.

W. H. VON DREELE