by Bob Hati, Water Environment & Technology, Vol. 7, No. 2 Feb. 1995
States with the best environmental records offer the best job opportunities and climate for long-term economic development, according to a study conducted by the nonprofit Institute for Southern Studies in Durham, N.C. The study, titled "Gold & Green," uses two separate lists of indicators to evaluate each state's economic performance and the stresses on its environment. The 20 economic indicators include annual pay, job opportunities, business start-ups, and workplace injury rates. The 20 environmental indicators range from toxic emissions and pesticide use to energy consumption and spending for natural resource protection. States were ranked on each indicator and the sum of ranks produced a state's final score.
Nine states (Hawaii, Vermont, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Maryland) ranked among the top 12 on both the economic and environmental scales. Conversely, 12 states are among the worst 14 on both lists. Louisiana ranked last on both. Other Iow-ranking states included West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Indiana, Arkansas, and Ohio.
The study does not support the argument that strong environmental standards suppress economic development. "States with stronger environmental standards tended to have the higher growth in their gross state products, total employment, construction employment, and labor productivity than states that ranked lower environmentally," says Stephen M. Meyer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied state economic performance for 20 years.
According to the report, the negative effects of environmentalism on economic development are usually so marginal that even if the cost of environmental controls pushes a factory or company over the competitive edge, the demand for safe-guarding public health is not to blame. A fragile facility, the report says, is operating on borrowed time, forcing someone else (taxpayers, workers, nearby residents) to subsidize its true costs to the environment and public. Identifying and ending hidden subsidies for polluting products or practices, according to the report, would dramatically advance sustainable development.
"The subsidies are generally paid by the public, and indicators of public welfare and environmental quality decline as they increase," says Paul H. Templet of Louisiana State University, who has studied hidden subsidies absorbed by states on behalf of their polluting industries. "The state becomes poorer, more polluted, less diversified, subject to boom and bust economies, and more reliant on the very industries which are reaping the subsidies."