THE WRONG ENVIRONMENTAL FIGHT

More than one speaker at American Petroleum Institute's annual meeting last week in Houston made a point that should put policy-makers in the U.S. back in a working mood. The point is this: A country can't improve the environment by strangling its economy.

"Economic growth is the key to environmental progress," said API Pres. Charles J. DiBona. He cited a Princeton University study showing that air pollution decreases once economic output reaches a certain level, although it may increase early in development.

Michael J. Boskin, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, put it another way. "Extreme measures that would bring economic growth to a halt will not improve the environment," he said. "On the contrary, they would degrade the environment. The wealthiest nations are those most willing and able to devote resources to environmental protection."

STUNTING ECONOMIC GROWTH

But, in the name of the environment, the U.S. is stunting economic growth every chance it gets. When environmentalists object to specific economic activity, the activity doesn't happen.

Environmentalists don't want Congress to lease the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Coastal Plain, so it won't. Environmentalists don't want the Bush administration to lease the Outer Continental Shelf, so in most places it won't. Environmentalists don't want Chevron Corp. to produce giant Point Arguello oil field at maximum rates, so it can't. Environmentalists don't want drilling to occur on East Coast OCS leases, so agencies won't issue permits.

As a consequence, major oil and gas companies are taking their upstream business out of the U.S. Independent companies must confine operations to traditional producing areas or find the money to fight endless battles for leases and permits on federal lands. In other words, the U.S. is sacrificing economic growth--and associated jobs, taxable incomes, royalties, and lease bonuses--in the belief that doing so helps the environment. Yet while domestic production plummets, reliance on imports increases, along with tanker traffic and the risk of spills.

The public might not stand for this hypocrisy if it were not for another mistaken belief creeping into the national psyche. It is the hazy assumption that something is at hand to replace petroleum that's cleaner and just as cheap--or nearly so. Well then, what is it? What fuel can approach petroleum in volume, convenience, and economics and do so anytime soon? The fact is, such a fuel exists only in the fantasies of wishful social planners.

By following environmentalism out the window, lawmakers and regulators are accommodating a dangerous ethic that's especially troublesome at a time when the rest of the world is turning the other way. The ethic equates economic torpor with goodness, which is probably immoral and certainly environmental nonsense. Less economic growth means more human suffering. And when people must focus on mere survival, environmental concerns vanish.

WHY FIGHT GROWTH?

The environmental consequences of wretched economies are clear: rain forests set afire by farmers desperate for land; waterways polluted in places where plumbing and sewerage are unthinkable; air and water spoiled by inefficient, state-owned factories.

The U.S. must come to its economic senses on the environment. Yes, the environment has problems. But they don't threaten the planet, and economic growth isn't among them. In fact, economic growth--source of the money, ideas, and equipment that clean the air and water--is as much an essential environmental solution as it is a human necessity. Why do governments in the U.S. keep fighting it?