Funding the environment
Radical new way to achieve success for companies and communities

Everyone claims government is too big and intrusive in our lives until they want a $27 million dollar highway interchange to help sell their property developments. Yet they denounce taking money from the American Heritage Rivers Initiative because that would be government intrusion in our lives. Our new credo: Protect ourselves from government intrusion of clean rivers and welcome government intrusion of wide highways. Brilliant. If there was only a Nobel Prize for flatland idiots!

More examples lead us to conclude government intrusion isn't really the issue for even the most hard-core government opponents like the so-called Freemen. They were caught with government funded luxury motor homes, helicopters, and loans for ranches.That's government intrusion by any standard. What about farm-loan programs or SBA loans? Isn't that government intrusion? Can you pay for a $500,000 medical bill or do you want government intrusion in the form of Medicaid? The alternative (death) is not very appealing to most folks.

Environmentalists want government intrusion to force companies to follow the law and protect the environment, and then they break the law by putting nails in trees to keep loggers from cutting them down. Unions want government intrusion to force other countries to play fair, and then they break up the WTO meetings in Seattle by rioting - which is illegal (and unfair) in all 50 states and most countries. Smoking dope while rioting is illegal also. Seventy percent of illegal drug use is done by people on the job, yet they want government intrusion to force employers to follow all laws about safety, discrimination, sexual harassment, and privacy.

Cut rhetoric and the red tape

Cutting the rhetoric provides us with an opportunity to look at and solve our problems more expediently. We all want government intrusion in some form as long as we get something out of it. We shouldn't wait for a catastrophe to occur and then beg for government intrusion. It may be too late.

For instance, global warming is a real concern to many people, especially those with real estate below 500 feet above sea level. The highest populations are in those areas, living and working on some of the most expensive real estate. If you add up the cost of these areas being under sea water it would really be quite insurmountable. Any price we paid now to prevent ocean levels from rising would be worth it in most people's minds.

I propose more government intrusion in our lives to get us out of our mess with the environment. Pay all costs incurred by companies and communities to protect the environment by the U.S. Taxpayer. This idea sounds economically absurd on the surface until we realize we all pay for environmental damage costs sooner or later. It may be a Superfund site, higher gasoline prices, or higher health costs. It would be cheaper to put all the costs together and pay them up front while creating efficiencies of scale to deal with the hazards. The other, higher, long-term costs, will come down, thereby saving all of us money and providing a better life.

This proposal will allow companies to get out of court, streamline operations, and improve productivity dramatically. This will also create opportunities for rural and inner city areas to build new businesses. Old businesses, like defense contractors, can change over to bring their expertise to solve big problems. New research opportunities for schools will accelerate.

A proposed pipeline in Western Montana would be a great opportunity to fund the environment. The company wants to go a shorter route through a mountain valley to save 65 miles and $50 million to ship products from refineries in Billings. The government and environmental groups want a longer route to follow the Interstate Highway. (Full Story in Billings Gazette).

The taxpayers should fund the extra $50 million for the longer route. This would help the environment and eliminate the transfer of products into rail cars. Loading and unloading petroleum products into rail cars increases the risk of a spill. Also, rail cars can derail causing severe problems. Pipelines are safer and we could recoup the costs by installing high-speed communication lines, while we lay the pipe, and partnering with a telecom/ISP.

Billings should welcome an opportunity to fund the pipeline because without it the refineries are losing market share and could be shut down in the future. The price of two highway interchanges would pay for the extra costs of the pipeline. People in Billings are also clamoring for a highway loop around the town for a speedier way to get from Wal-Mart East to Wal-Mart West. This loop is expected to cost over $100 million. If the refineries shut down, where is the gasoline going to come from to travel this new route? Probably from a new pipeline, this time coming into Montana from out-of-state refineries, at a much higher price. While we are at it we should fund the cost of cleaning up the sulfur dioxide coming from the refineries into the air. (Update on SO2 cleanup: Conoco story in Billings Gazette).

What we can and can't afford as a nation is strange thinking. We can't afford to acknowledge and fix the asbestos problem in Libby, Montana, but we can afford the slow deaths, medical bills, lawsuits, wasted time, public relations nightmare, lower property values, and businesses going under.

We can't afford to pay for strong cyanide protection at gold mines, but we can afford the largest environmental catastrophe in Europe since Chernobyl with the ensuing death, sickness, business disruption, and waste.

We can't afford to protect our cherry mountains in Montana, but we can afford to pay for pit reclamation. (See story on judges ruling).

We can't afford planning or to relocate buildings and towns off the flood plains, but we can afford dams, channel rip-rapping, and flood clean-up and rebuilding year after year, not to mention the loss of life, business, utilities and other infrastructure.

We can't afford 15 cent roof tie-down straps in Florida, but we can afford to rebuild the entire community in the wake of a hurricane. We can't afford stronger homes and safety glass in tornado alley but we can afford burying people, clean-up, and rebuilding from the almost daily reports of death and destruction during the tornado season.

To fund the environment it's not a question of raising money. World capital markets move 1.3 trillion dollars around the world in electronic transactions daily. Microsoft alone is valued at over 500 billion dollars. Each new day brings a new Wall Street merger/acquisition deal worth over $100 billion. Many corporate leaders admit the price being paid is not for what the companies are worth now, it is what they anticipate their worth will be in the future. They also tell us they have to buy the companies or their competitors will buy them. Their very survival depends on spending the big bucks now and they have found a way to fund it.

Ditto the environment.

How much can your community afford to lose?
e-mail jb@redfly.com.

Copyright 2000 by Jeffrey C. Baston, NCARB, AIA