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A common refrain is the theme that carbon control, indeed all pollution control kills jobs. What is ignored now after successful regulation of pollution is that very real fact pollution kills people. After success in reducing pollution into the air, water and land we forget that when I was born, rivers were on fire in Ohio and toxic waste sites killing children with leukemia in many towns around the country.
The EPA is a job creation engine that creates more jobs than it costs. California, the most heavily regulated state in the world has one of the world’s top economies. While Texas now surpasses California in population, do you ever hear about Texas being first in anything? Texas’ economy is not one of the largest in the world. Texas relies on fossil fuel that causes cancer, heart and lung disease, asthma and increasingly premature death from breast and lung cancer in non-smokers under 35.
The life of human being is estimated by the General Accounting Office at $5 million. Let us just say its cots $100,000 to employ a person. So that means one person’s life is worth 50 jobs. Many EPA regulations save tens of thousands of lives from death from pollution in the air, water or soil. Let us just say that a pollution control rule saves 10,000 lives, a fairly low estimate given a population of over 300 million. This translates to about $50 million in terms of human lives according to the actuaries. If my reasoning holds up the job killer theorists would show that 500,000 jobs would be lost from saving 10,000 lives.
Have you ever hear of 500,000 jobs list due to one regulation from EPA, DOT, OSHA or the FAA? No.
Regulation does not cause job loss. It saves human lives. Regulation improves the quality of life for people who are vulnerable to pollution and to healthy people who otherwise never get sick. Most of the jobs and technologies closed by government regulation are inefficient, ineffective and often rely ob outdated technology that is simply not competitive in the world economy. If you have to create pollution that causes public health problems locally because your product is poor, do you deserve to be in business?