This weekend, The New York Times ran a piece rounding up the regressive actions Tea Party governors and their friends are taking at the state level across the country. From ending certain state regulations to defunding the state environmental departments to hamper enforcement, these governors are making sure that their actions complement any anti-environment actions at the federal level.
[E]fforts to make historically large cuts to environmental programs are also in play at the state level as legislatures and governors take aim at conservation and regulations they see as too burdensome to business interests.Governor [Paul] LePage [of Maine] summed up the animus while defending his program in a radio address. 'Maine's working families and small businesses are endangered,' he said. 'It is time we start defending the interests of those who want to work and invest in Maine with the same vigor that we defend tree frogs and Canadian lynx.'
That's a shame, because during the inaction of the Bush administration states were often taking the lead. A report from the nonprofit Environment America found that state-level policies were set to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 81 million metric tons a year, and a study from the Center for Climate Strategies, a nonprofit organization that provides economic analysis for states on climate change policies, found that state efforts, if extrapolated nationally, would add 2.5 million jobs by 2020.
Those states should be taken with a grain of salt. Many of the policies were plans that had yet to be enacted or were in the beginnings stages. The economic data is even fuzzier, since we don't really know what a green job is and many states haven't measured their green sectors at all. Still, the idea LePage repeats that the environment and the economy are at odds is an old one, and one that should have been retired by now.
