Gold & Green: Together Again

From the mountains to the coasts, from the awe-inspiring native forests to the subtly satisfying Piedmont hills, Southerners take great pride in the splendor of their natural heritage.

Sadly, the region’s unique environment is under assault from a multitude of forces and directions. Burgeoning city sprawl, rampant deforestation, and growing toxic threats to land, air and water have all seized headlines and stirred countless communities to action.

Yet when concerned citizens across the South organize to protect their environmental health, they are routinely faced with a common refrain: environmental protection costs jobs. Business and political elites argue that environmental standards are, at best, a drag on economic performance, and at worst, a threat to the livelihood of entire communities.

The persistent “jobs vs. the environment” myth has powerful effect, often stalling environmental standards, and pitting working families against environmental advocates. This is especially true in impoverished Southern communities, which are desperate for jobs and have to take seriously corporate threats of layoffs and other economic fallout from protecting the environment.

Investigating the Myth

But does protecting environmental health really have to come at the expense of jobs and economic performance? To find out, the Institute investigated the “jobs vs. the environment” myth in a six-month study, Gold and Green 2000.

Gold and Green 2000 ranked all 50 states on two separate lists of indicators: one measuring each state’s economic performance, and the other measuring stresses on the natural environment. The economic indicators included annual pay, job opportunities, business start-ups and workplace injury rates; the environmental yardsticks ranged from toxic emissions and pesticide use to energy consumption and urban sprawl.

Comparing the two lists revealed remarkable correlations:

Seven states rank in the top 15 for both economic and environmental health. Vermont, Rhode Island and Minnesota rank in the top six on both lists. Other “top performers” with high marks on both scales are Colorado, Maryland, Maine, and Wisconsin.

Conversely, ten states — mostly in the South — are among the worst 15 on both lists. For example, Louisiana ranks 48th on economic performance and 50th on the environment. Others in the cellar are: Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Indiana, Arkansas, West Virginia, Kentucky, and South Carolina.

The conclusion of these findings is clear: States with the best environmental records also offer the best job opportunities and climate for long-term economic development. And conversely, states that rank lowest for environmental health — clustered largely in the Southern part of the country — also have the worst economic prospects.

“In the 2000 elections, political leaders were still debating about whether protecting the environment will cost jobs,” says Chris Kromm, Institute director and co-author of the report with Keith Ernst and Jaffer Battica. “What this study finds is that the trade-off myth is untrue. At the policy level, efforts to promote a healthy environment and a sound economy go hand-in-hand.”

Gold and Green 2000 is an updated version of a similar study authored by the Institute in 1994. The original study had similar findings, and the authors observe that comparisons of the 1994 and 2000 reports offer a useful yardstick for gauging which states are improving — or falling behind — on their environmental and economic records. For example:

While there was some jockeying among “bottom performers” — those ranking in the lower 15 on both environmental and economic scales — since the 1994 edition of the study, only two states managed to escape from the bottom of the barrel in 2000: Ohio and Oklahoma.

Since 1994, the list of environmental and economic “top performers” — those with high environmental and economic scores — has seen more turn-over, with Rhode Island and Maine adding themselves to the honor role. While New Hampshire and Massachusetts continue to post strong economic numbers, greater environmental threats removed them from the top of the list. Similarly, the strong environmental records of Hawaii and Oregon could not offset these states’ sub-par economic performance.

“Now we have two similar studies that point to the same conclusion: states can have a strong economy and protect the environment,” co-author Keith Ernst says. “And states that sacrifice their natural resources for quick-fix development aren’t improving their long-term economic prospects.”

Bridging the Divide

Gold and Green 2000 comes at a time when bitter battles have broken out over the supposed conflict between jobs and the environment. For example, in June 2000, national African-American and Latino labor leaders released a widely reported study — commissioned by the coal industry-backed Center for Energy and Economic Development — opposing the Kyoto global climate treaty due to a perceived threat to “Black and Hispanic jobs.”

Across the country, local conflicts have pitted environmentalists against logging businesses, chemical companies, and other industries, who in turn raise the specter of job losses due to environmental standards.

But Gold and Green 2000 joins a growing chorus of experts who argue that, while businesses may invoke the “jobs vs. the environment” trade-off to resist regulation, the myth is unfounded. For one, environmental regulation comes at a small cost.

“Even in the most highly regulated industries, the cost tops out at 2 to 3 percent of total operating costs,” says Dr. James Barrett, environmental economist at the Economic Policy Institute. “Clearly, when industry says it’s going to shut down or move, it’s not the environmental laws that are causing this.”

Barrett also observes that steps can easily be taken to prevent economic dislocation. When environmental standards do impact industry — most frequently, companies that are already in decline — the answer is not to prolong the life of polluting or unsustainable businesses, but to ensure a “just transition” of workers to new jobs.

“Many people are talking about ‘just transition’ today, but there’s been little effort to devise policies that work,” Barrett says. As a model, he points to the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, enacted in the 1960s and designed to assist workers laid off due to trade agreements. The Act has been little-used by workers, mostly because it provides no income support to supplement the training it offers to employees seeking new jobs — an oversight that could be easily fixed.

The importance of constructively addressing the “jobs vs. the environment” myth may become more crucial in the coming years. As state budgets shrink and the economy slows, demands for quick-fix development — whatever the costs to the environment — will only grow. Sustainable development policies adopted now will be essential to averting conflict over the environment/economy divide in the future.

“This study shows that sustainable development is a matter of political will,” says Kromm. “States that protect their natural resources also cherish their human resources. And states seeking quick-fix, unsustainable development end up sacrificing both workers and the environment.”