Early On, Obama Endorsed the Fallacy of Zero-Sum Competition Between Jobs & the Environment

[amborin]

Early on, Obama essentially said that environmental initiatives have to be balanced against job preservation/creation. This is a version of the same mantra that's repeatedly voiced: that preserving the environment harms jobs, and that when it comes down to the wire, legislators should choose jobs over the environment.

Obama should have seized this opportunity to go before the American public and explain what rethugs are doing; he should tell Americans how rethugs are pressuring to roll back (and it is a roll back no matter how it's sanitized) hard fought environmental regulations, and pressuring to weaken regulations that have taken decades to enact.

Obama also had this golden oppportunity to go before Americans and explain that there is no zero sum competition between jobs and the environment, that this is fallacious thinking. It's possible to merge the two goals of job creation and environmental preservation in a positive sum manner, through innnovation, creativity and thoughtul planning.

Worse yet, is: part of the rationale for this latest unconscionable decision is the burden it would place on strapped city and state agencies. Once again, we see the harm the bush tax cuts are causing.

from back in 2009:

'Green jobs' at heart of Obama's Earth Day push on energy

"The Obama administration is using Earth Day for launching another all-out effort to sell the American public and key lawmakers on "green jobs" as the solution for the United States' environmental and economic woes.


The jobs push starts at a critical time for the administration's energy agenda. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is starting hearings on a comprehensive climate and energy bill that President Obama has long portrayed as key to in his efforts toward economic recovery (see related story).


The administration must also try in the next few weeks to push through Congress a budget resolution that raises spending in several energy-related areas, again with the promise of creating millions of new jobs in the renewable-energy arena.


It has become increasingly clear that the administration's central theme -- not to mention its pitch to key lawmakers -- is that energy-related legislative priorities are based not only on environmental merits but on their ability to create jobs....."


http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/04/22/22greenwire-green-jobs-at-heart-of-obamas-earth-day-push-o-10631.html?scp=3&sq=obama%20and%20green%20jobs&st=cse

[blindpig]

1. Actually it's a zero sum game of Capital vs Nature

Whose side is he on?

[amborin]

5. agree

there's some article that definitively shows this...will try to find it...

[Jackpine Radical]

2. And then there's his buy-in to the whole Republican-inspired deficit frame.

I guess I'm just another pissed-off professional leftist with no pony.

[amborin]

6. that,

plus so many other tragically misguided (or deliberately chosen) moves

[QC]

3. You know, I can't think of many right wing frames that he hasn't eagerly embraced.

Tax cuts create jobs.
Government cannot create jobs.
Rich people are job creators.
"Free trade" creates jobs.
The problem with education is bad teachers.
Environmental protection costs jobs.

etc.

[amborin]

7. totally agree

and wasn't HCR inherited from the Heritage Foundation?

[QC]

10. Yes. Mandates were originally a GOP idea.

[The2ndWheel]

4. Depends on what the jobs are

If it's building roads for example, it's a zero-sum game.

[amborin]

8. yes,

building roads surely leads to more devastation

but with planning, ingenuity, and innovation, and inspired by the goal of energy savings and
environmental protections, there are many new jobs that could be created that don't negatively
impact the environment

[The2ndWheel]

9. I'll believe it when I see it

There's a few thousand years of history, momentum, and complexity working against such an ideal. Not to mention the truly global coordination required for such an undertaking.