We can't afford any more environmental protection, because it will hurt the economy. Probably every time any new standards were proposed to clean up our air or water and protect our health. These arguments are the most common ones we face in trying to protect the earth. Politicians spout them freely, and so do business groups and radio talk show entertainers. What I want to do here is summarize a few of the more notable studies, to show that there is good quality ammunition for us to use when anti-environmentalists trot out those tired old claims.
Some states have much stricter environmental standards than others.
The common belief is that this would hurt the strict states and help the lax ones. But the truth is exactly the opposite, as two comprehensive studies show. Professor Stephen Meyer of MIT rated all fifty states according to the strictness of their environmental protection policies. He then compared those ratings with indicators of economic health, such as overall growth, employment growth and construction growth, over a period of nearly twenty years. Shortly after Meyer's work appeared, a similar study was done by the Institute for Southern Studies in North Carolina.