When discussing overall impacts on employment, it is important not to overlook the new technologies and industries that can be driven by pollution control standards.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I see a future where getting to work or to school or to the store does not have to cause pollution.
I am very concerned that federal and state air quality programs do not consider public health in regulating certain classes of industrial air emissions.
Looking beyond the emerging markets, it is important not to lose sight of the growth opportunities that exist in the developed regions.
Indeed, the economy and the environment need not be seen in opposition.
Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.
This whole idea that we address environmental issues by not doing stuff just doesn't work.
When you put in place regulations that are so burdensome, so tough, so much so that they cripple your economy, we then don't have the resources to invest in technologies that are going to make that difference, because it's just going to shut everything down. That's not going to help us as an economy.
We have to build the capacity of our institutions, employees and workers. Our regulatory environment has not been encouraging to research, innovation and enterprise.
Conserving energy and thus saving money, reducing consumption of unnecessary products and packaging and shifting to a clean-energy economy would likely hurt the bottom line of polluting industries, but would undoubtedly have positive effects for most of us.
Our twenty-first century economy may focus on agriculture, not information.