Regulation of Pollution Creates Jobs

Conservatives and Republican politicians claim that government regulations destroy jobs and hurt economic growth.  However this is a fallacy that promotes the agenda of their corporate backers funding them. Regulation of pollution creates jobs and grows the economy.

Conservative think tank (for example, George C. Marshall Institute, The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute) economists publish claims that regulations, especially EPA rules, cause job losses and shrink the economy.  Their primary statistical tool is called correlation.  When two or more characteristics of a group of items show a tendency to vary together then you have a statistical correlation. Correlation is suppose to indicate that two things are related in time and space.

Correlation is like the “pull my finger” joke.  The pull is not really causing the sound.  When economists use correlation to justify eliminating environmental regulations, they are tricking us with the “pull my finger” joke.  Fox News and Republican politicians use correlation to justify economic policies that are “pull my finger” jokes.  They are all relating two or more things together as if they were cause and effect, and close together in space and time, to trick people into believing one caused the other.

For example, Fox News John Stossel wrote on his blog, November 14, 2011:

“The truth is that regulations kill jobs.  The Clean Air Act provides a clear example.  The Act's rules were toughest on American counties with the most pollution. Economist Michael Greenstone found that those counties lost more jobs than other counties. They lost:

... approximately 590,000 jobs, $37 billion in capital stock, and $75 billion (1987$) of output in pollution intensive industries.”

Stossel is claiming a correlation between counties with the highest pollution, and job and economic losses.  This is a “pull my finger” joke on readers.  The paper studied plant observations from the Census of Manufactures and focused on polluting industries that were clearly the focus of the Clean Air Act and amendments.  Stossel cherry picked a study and then misinformed readers of the interpretation of the results.  Correlating job and economic losses with the Clean Air Act is a “pull my finger” joke.

Pollution flows into the public commons affecting everyone.  Regulations focus on the source of the pollution and create demand in the market for ways to produce goods and services, energy and food without polluting the public commons.  There are costs to implementing pollution controls and economic studies support the need to deal with the loss of jobs and economic losses by documenting the impact on counties most in need of government support.

Pollution reduction methods require investment and create jobs however those new investments and jobs might not locate in the same counties as where the jobs losses occur.  Because of the market system that Conservatives and Republican politicians support, some counties might experience a decline and others might experience an increase in jobs and economic growth.

Reference: Stossel, John. "Regulations Create Jobs?" Fox Business. Web. 02 Feb. 2012. <http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2011/11/14/regulations-create-jobs-give-me-break>.