Quotes of the day:
Results from a survey of members of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the leading professional organization of economists studying environmental and resource issues, found that 80 percent disagree that reducing the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory power will improve the U.S. economy.
“Markets, left alone, often fail to address environmental issues, and that is not good for the economy or society,” said the survey’s co-author Tim Haab, chair of the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at The Ohio State University. The department is part of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences. “It is significant that 96 percent of members surveyed disagree that unregulated markets provide public goods in optimal quantities.”
Haad [sic] pointed out that the survey was conducted in 2012 well before the current presidential cycle and yielded results that were not in any way influenced by the current debate over the Trump administration’s proposed significant policy and budget changes to the EPA.
If approved, the changes to the EPA would weaken various air and water regulations and, according to a consensus of the survey’s respondents, would be unlikely to improve the U.S. economy, Haab said.
via www.hpj.com
