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Environmental Impacts: Conflicts and Trade-offs
Edmunds, Stahrl W.
19/3  (Spring 1977): 5-11

The environment versus business represents two sides of ones life, in which one trade-off health and aesthetic goals against economic goals. In this sense, environmental impacts have innumerable ramifications throughout the range of activities, like any of the other great polarities and mysteries of living. The ultimate trade-off in environmental impacts has come to the fore during the current recession. Former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford commented upon it when he said, "I am for the environment, but I am also for jobs." The message is clear that jobs come first, as perhaps they should, but what is not clear is whether there is a logical connection, as implied in the foregoing statement, between environmental requirements and unemployment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a study which estimated that the unemployment consequences of environmental requirements are 0.05 to 1 percent, which is a very small part of the 9 percent unemployment rate in the economy. Unemployment and the recession are derived, at least in part, from overpricing and price misalignments caused by inflation.

 

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