Toyota worked on its hybrid fleet, using research and development to answer the challenge posed by environmental regulators. Ideally, this is the response of companies to regulation, and the prosperity of Toyota and the failure of GM was once viewed as a cautionary tale. As consumers do not always buy what is 'good for them,' and good for the environment, regulatory pressures are required to eliminate or tax products and foods that harm the environment, such as gas-guzzling cars, corn-fed beef and pesticides. This makes using these products either illegal or more expensive and costly for consumers, thus creating an artificially higher demand for more environmentally-friendly products and increasing the incentive for companies to provide other products.
The problem with viewing regulation as a solution to environmental and economic problems, however, is that R&D does not always yield the expected returns on investments. Toyota's efforts to create hybrid cars now seem overly hasty. Regulatory efforts to improve the American diet have met with political roadblocks, as advocates of conventional farming and subsidies for American cash crops have powerful interests in Congress. Additionally, simply because regulations are put into place does not mean that effective new technology will come and consumers will alter their habits quickly enough for a satisfying short-term payoff of environmental improvement and economic expansion.
There is a solution to overconsumption, of course, but it is not necessarily a politically palatable one, or one which will stimulate the economy: to buy less and to use less. Car pooling, public transportation, biking, and other low-cost methods are also ways to use less fossil fuel....
This will also hurt many restaurants and result in economic
pain for people involved in food services. There is some investment potential in green actions: reconfiguring cities to be more pedestrian-friendly, creating a more sustainable transportation infrastructure, and organic farming. But these efforts will take a massive investment, and not necessarily stimulate the economy. Funds at the federal and state levels are low for expanding transportation, and simply creating more stringent regulations does not necessarily mean that the
money will come from somewhere. The
science of organic and locally-based farming is fairly slow, and will not necessarily feed large communities in a cost-effective fashion.
Environmental regulation is necessary, and some policies may have more of an immediate positive impact upon the
environment and the
economy than others. But many of these regulations will initially cause pain, rather than improvement, in the financial lives of Americans and the world. This does not mean that there should not be more stringent regulations. But to predict that improvements in the environment and economic expansion go hand-in-hand is a denial of the hard work and sacrifices that are required to reverse the negative impact of
human life on the planet.
