Opinion: System forces taxpayers to subsidize industry’s environmental destruction
As taxpayers, we are subsidizing corporate polluters to destroy the environment, then we pay them again to patch it up. It’s insane. … This subsidy encourages planetary destruction. Here is an example: Say I manufacture computer chips and use arsenic in the etching process. Treating used arsenic is expensive. If I dump it down the drain, I’ll save money. Of course, the arsenic doesn’t go away, it’s cleaned up by the wastewater treatment company. To the manufacturer this externalized cost is the same as profits.
-Written by Barry Phegan, the author of “Conflict, Meetings, and Difficult People.”