To the editors:
I was disappointed to read Ben Wetmore’s column, “Environmental policies need to be more efficient,” which was filled with inaccuracies about the environment and economy.
First, he says, “The economy, when running on its own, is responsible, clean and environmentally conscious.” This statement could not be further from the truth. In a free market economy, money is the primary concern, and most often, it costs extra money to develop sustainable technology or change to a more earth-friendly mode of production. This is why, despite all the “obvious gains” by the industry that Wetmore cites, carbon emissions from the United States have risen steadily since the 1980s.
Ben also goes on to say, “Money is a substitute measurement for energy.” He, no doubt, shares this sentiment with the lawmakers who have blocked legislation such as cap-and-trade bills from being passed, while accepting millions of dollars in campaign contributions from special–interest groups and businesses in the energy sector. This is the primary reason why our economy is, for all practical purposes, “running on its own” when it comes to pollution of the environment.
He also says that it is better to use new paper than recycle, because of the transportation, sorting and processing costs that go along with it, and also because the ink cannot be recycled and is buried in 55–gallon drums in the earth. Is this worse than that same amount of ink, as well as the paper it was on, being buried in a landfill instead? And I haven’t seen any statistics, but I would venture to guess that the environmental (and economic) cost of chopping down trees, transporting them to a processing facility and making paper out of them is at least as great as the cost to transport, sort and process the recycled paper.
Wetmore makes the argument in his column that the economy will naturally be environmentally friendly, and humans will naturally take care of the earth. One simplistic analogy he uses sums up the naïve attitude the entire column was written with: “Farmers who own farms tend to them.” Yes, they tend to them, with harmful pesticides and fertilizers that run into the Mississippi River and are currently causing an ever-increasing oxygen-free “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, which is growing every year and becoming a significant threat to the Louisiana economy.
In this and many other circumstances, the consequences of our profit-focused actions are not realized until it’s too late, and the economic cost is greater than it would have been to use environmentally friendly practices in the first place. Hopefully, we will realize that the ideal models of economics sometimes don’t work, and that we need to take action to make sure we as a country, and a world, have a long, prosperous future.
Jordan Harbaugh-Williams
Biology sophomore
