The European Union is considering a plan to pay fishermen to catch plastic trash, rather than fish. In Orwellian logic, this stems from a practice of throwing away as much as two-thirds of the fish caught in the sea, because this "bycatch" is undersized or less valuable than the targeted species. The EU wants to end this wasteful practice (over a million tons of dead fish each year are tossed back into the North Sea alone), but fishermen object, because they don’t want boats filled with less valuable fish—so the idea is to pay them to pick up the garbage to sweeten the deal, and to get the garbage out of the ocean.
Meanwhile, a recent study by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York discovered that America spends a "staggering" $76.6 billion every year to cover the health expenses of our children who get sick because of exposure to toxic chemicals and air pollution. That figure includes the cost of medical care and the lost workdays of parents caring for their kids. The inestimable costs of exposure to things like lead in homes and soot in the air include children with severe learning impairment and chronic asthma, among many others.
So what do sick kids and garbage-collecting fishermen have in common? Shortsighted environmental protection policies. Enforcing pollution laws would reduce illness in kids and adults alike, not to mention reducing trash that needs to be collected from the ocean. Investment in clean technologies, including those that reduce pollution and recycle waste, would make this profitable not just from avoided cost, but from the new businesses it would spawn.
Some investors are getting the message, but not necessarily in the U.S. or E.U. Venture capitalists increased cleantech spending in the first quarter of 2011 some 54% over the same period last year. But the U.S. fell to 17th on a list of the top 38 cleantech investment nations for all types of capital—China is first, followed closely by Denmark, Germany, Brazil, and Lithuania. Yes, the U.S. is behind Lithuania in a race we can’t afford to lose.
Enlightened government regulation can lead to innovation that investors can follow in these emerging fields. The researchers that uncovered the $76.6 billion in health care costs called for mandates to test the toxicity of chemicals already in commerce, incorporating new assessment technologies to get the widest and most reliable results. That kind of "green chemistry" regulation will lead to new businesses to perform the testing, new chemicals and natural replacements for toxic ones, and clever new cradle-to-cradle designs (thanks Bill McDonough) of everything from baby bottles to sofas.
It all boils down to two simple rules:
- Invest now or pay later (We’re already paying for our mistakes, but consider it a $76.6 billion wakeup call).
- Help America invest in these clean technologies—and support regulations that provide certainty—or watch those jobs and those dollars go to China... and Lithuania.
[Image: Flickr user epSos.de]