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Greens are often called anti-labor because of our concern for the environment. Doug Campbell gave an excellent rebuttal to this accusation when he answered the question below which was posted on a Green list server.
Subject: Is environmentalism anti-labor?
From Greens v. Energy by Dr. George Reisman:"The environmental movement is profoundly anti-labor, because in seeking to undercut the productivity of labor, it strikes at the foundation of rising real wages. Only a higher productivity of labor, based on the use of more energy per capita, not less, serves to increase the supply of products relative to the supply of labor and thus to reduce prices relative to wages, or, what is equivalent, to make it possible for wages to rise without prices having to rise, or rise as much."
(George Reisman, Ph.D., is professor of Economics at Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management and is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.)
More energy consumption per capita is not the only way to increase wages. Whenever anyone claims that [some cause] is the 'only' way to achieve [some effect], they're missing something. With the possible exception of narrowly-defined questions in theoretical mathematics, there is always more than one solution to a problem.
One method of raising wages would be market forces. A labor scarcity (real or manipulated) or effective labor organizing would enable labor to command higher wages. A shrewd corporation is already charging the highest possible price the market will bear, regardless of its costs. Despite lip service to the contrary, they cannot pass along increased costs by charging higher prices to the consumers. Rising costs are absorbed out of the profit margin.
More efficient use of energy to achieve the same results is another possibility. Probably half the energy consumed in America is wasted, which means that America could consume half as much energy without any change in productivity. There's nothing anti-environmental about consuming energy more effectively.
Consider the example of Macomb County, Michigan, USA, and Essex County, Ontario, Canada. These two counties are approximately next door to each other and share the same climate. New houses in Essex county are subject to Canadian energy codes and consume about one third the energy of their American counterparts. They are not less (or more) productive, comfortable, or useful; their occupants cannot discern the difference; they just have slightly higher construction costs, slightly higher labor content, and substantially lower energy consumption. (and hence, lower total ownership costs and emissions) There's something anti-environmental or anti-labor about this?
Another example: Imagine that it's 1973 again. We've just suffered through the first OPEC oil embargo, and I tell the United Auto Workers that they're going to stop building carburetor and begin building computer-controlled, low-emission engines. (much like the current myth that Greens want to eliminate the internal-combustion engine) I'm sure that I would be laughed out of the union halls as a nutcase.
Yet today, a generation later, every car off the line has such an engine, and guess what? Not only is the UAW perfectly capable, with the right tools and engineering support, of making them, but the brain box turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to the internal-combustion engine.
They never run lean, so they never burn out the spark plugs or the exhaust valves. They never run rich or flood, so they start in the winter, last longer because the lubricating oil is never diluted with fuel, and the oil change interval has been extended from 3000 miles to 8000 miles.
Many of today's engines are flexible-fuel vehicles, which means they can use high-octane gas, low-octane gas, ethanol, methanol, or any combination because the computer continuously samples the exhaust and adjusts the fuel delivery. Not only that, but today's engines deliver the same power as a generation ago, using smaller engines and half the fuel.
Average fuel economy of cars has risen from 12-15 miles per gallon in 1973 to 24.5 mi/gal in 2001. It would have been 27.5 mi/gal without the intervention of the "environmentalist" Clinton/Gore administration rolling back the federal CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. Even today's big ugly sport-brutality vehicles consume no more fuel than yesterday's standard cars, and emit 2-5% of the regulated emissions - CO, NOx, HC, and particulates. ... But I rant.
Douglas Campbell
DrCampbell@Engineer.com
The writer is a registered professional engineer and a former (until the Daimler takeover) Chrysler design engineer.