Forget “global warming.” Forget the cuteness of spotted squirrels. I’m here to talk about how much environmental deregulation is going to cost you, taxpayer and middle class citizen of this country – in money – and how it’s poised to create dependence on foreign resources that will make our current problems with foreign oil look like a country picnic.
This issue is so often parsed in terms of aesthetics; I think it’s time someone talked about it in dollars and cents.
For decades you’ve heard businesses whine and moan that environmental regulation – laws placing limits on how much environmental pollution a company can legally create and how much of our natural resources they can legally destroy – hurts their bottom line and is part of what’s hindering our economy. What they don’t tell you is that all environmental deregulation really does is shift the cost of that pollution from them to you, the taxpayer.
The technical term for this is externalizing costs – meaning a situation where a business gets someone else to pay their operating expenses. In the case of environmental deregulation, that someone is you. Every time you open your tax bill – and your bill for medical insurance premiums, and your grocery bill – you’re paying for that pollution. As for the profits created in the course of creating that pollution, they wind up in the hands of the executives of multinationals who don’t pay a dime of taxes here – while you’re paying through the nose.
Let’s look at the primary areas in which environmental deregulation hurts the economy – namely the cost of medical care, our decreasing tourism market, our ever-less-secure agricultural base, the cost of utilities (especially water), and waste disposal. Then we’ll look at the costs you’re paying for deregulation as a homeowner, parent, or small business owner.
Environmental pollution is the root cause of hundreds of diseases, from cardiopulmonary ailments like asthma and heart disease to autoimmune diseases like lupus and multiple sclerosis, to an astonishing number of cancers. These are chronic diseases that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat over the course of a patient’s lifetime. You’re paying for this, and so is the U.S. treasury. Remember that medical insurance is a pool, and your premiums cover everyone else in the pool. Remember, too, that Medicaid and Medicare are financed by the taxpayer. Every dollar spent treating cardiopulmonary disease, autoimmune disease and cancer caused by pollution takes money out of your pocket. Moreover, unlike smoking, eating cheeseburgers, and drinking, there’s no opt-out for this health risk; if you breathe the air or drink the water you’ve opted in.
Tourism is a huge part of any country’s revenue stream. Our greatest lures for tourists have never been our cities, but our natural wonders – the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Yellowstone, et. al. Our beaches, lakes and rivers have provided the backbone of many local economies for decades. But as these natural wonders become sludge ponds and barren wastelands the businesses that depend on them dry up. Ask a hotel owner on the Gulf Coast how business was for years after the Deepwater Horizon spill; ask a lodge owner in Idaho what happens when the formerly salmon-filled river becomes a sewer. Their businesses, and every local business that services them, dry up. Our forests and lakes aren’t just pretty to look at; they support thousands of small businesses and tens of thousands of jobs.
Then there’s the cost to agriculture; every year we lose arable land to chemical and oil spills, polluted aquifers, and ground contaminated with toxins. This drives up the cost of the food you buy at the grocery store. And as bad as that is, it pales in comparison to the biggest looming threat: potential dependence on foreign nations for food.
A nation is only truly free as long as it is agriculturally independent; a nation that has to rely on other nations for food is a nation held hostage. Our greatest source of independence was, since the beginning of this country, our abundant arable land. We’re now destroying that arable land to the tune of hundreds of acres a day, every day. Consider this: one pipeline spill can wipe out a million acres of farming land if it pollutes the aquifer. That’s a million acres of corn, wheat, or soybeans. If you think dependence on foreign oil has been a rough ride for this nation, consider what dependence on foreign sources for wheat and corn would do.
Now consider what dependence on foreign nations for clean water would do.
If you pay for water you’re already paying a fortune for environmental deregulation. The scarcer a resource is the more it costs, and clean water grows scarcer daily. And if we continue to permit the destruction of our supply of clean water by corporations that take the money and run, you can expect to be paying twice what you are now in five years. How will that affect your home or your business?
Then there’s the cost of cleanup for all this. When a corporation is finished strip-mining an area or producing toxic chemicals or harvesting natural gas, you the taxpayer pay the cost of cleanup, which is usually tens of billions of dollars. Think about that the next time you write Uncle Sam a check or open your paycheck.
Then there’s the looming cost to you the homeowner of less-than-pristine water, which corrodes your pipes; great news for the plumbing industry, bad news for you. With the new head of the EPA in place you can expect your pipes to take a hit, and your city’s water system to need costly replacement pipe as well. You’ll be paying for that.
And then there’s the matter of hydraulic fracturing.
Hydraulic fracturing destabilizes the ground and contaminates aquifers. It’s only a matter of time before fracking causes a major earthquake or pollutes an aquifer covering five or six counties. Cleanup will run into the billions – that in addition to the loss of life, injuries, and destroyed businesses – and once again, you’ll be the one paying the tab. (You’re already paying quite a lot for the never-ending array of sinkholes fracking is creating, too.)
I would be remiss if I did not discuss climate change and its costs to you.
I was a fence-sitter on the matter (much to the displeasure of certain friends) until the scientific evidence reached critical mass. It has, and it can now be stated conclusively that the planet is getting warmer and the trend is manmade.
Climate change has paradoxical effects; some regions experience a cooling trend as the ice melts, while other regions experience profound drought. Storm systems also change and intensify and thus are more destructive. (Remember our old friends at FEMA and their job of mopping up after such disasters? You pay for that too.) Seas also rise, and in due time that’s going to cost a fortune (try this as a weekend project: move Boston a hundred miles inland.) And guess who’s going to pay for that?
Bernie Sanders was mocked when he said the greatest threat to our national security is climate change. It is a pity he did not explain his remark.
Globally, desertification and drought are displacing millions, and they have to go somewhere; not only that, but they’re understandably angry at their loss of their ancestral farmlands and their livelihood. Angry people are easy pickings for would-be despots, tin pot would-be messiahs, the leaders of terrorist groups, and other maggots who need legions of demoralized, disillusioned people to be their army. This isn’t just scary, it’s expensive; containing the ensuing melee requires manpower, technology and more of your tax dollars for thinkers to try to come up with a strategy to keep the anger of the displaced from winding up in your backyard. And the more angry, displaced people there are, the more difficult – and expensive – this is to do.
Then there are the human costs of deregulation.
Contaminated water causes birth defects and developmental disabilities. It causes legions or children to be born incapable of ever realizing their full intellectual and human potential. It creates children who will never ride a bike, or read a book without help, or live on their own. The water coming out of your faucet is about to be completely unregulated and no longer guaranteed free of such contaminants as lead. Remember Flint?
That’s the human cost. In dollars and cents, it also costs a fortune over a lifetime to provide medical care and education to these children. And it doesn’t have to be this way – this is a preventable tragedy.
What’s occurring now in Washington is the complete dismantling of every regulation currently in effect to protect our air, water, and ground. In fact, there’s a bill eliminating the EPA by the year 2018 pending in Congress. Think about the aggregate cost of all these things, the impact on your life and health, the consequences to our security. If you think this is a mistake, there’s still time to stop it, still time to make your voice heard. If you want to do so you can do so here:
Contact the President here:
The EPA apparently doesn’t want you to have an email to contact them at; however, their phone number is (202) 272-0167.
Find your congressional representative and how to contact them here:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
Find your senator and how to contact them here:
https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
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