The Big Money Behind "Enviros"

Cynicism comes naturally to anyone who pays attention.

Thus, when you hear the term "regulation," you can believe the pap-spewing telling you about how "regulation" provides untold benefits to mothers and children, the Republic, and the Globe in general.

Or you can dig around a bit to find the hidden agenda--which often is a "larger-profits" agenda.

Sure enough, "regulation" of waste-incineration is crawling out from under the skirt of WMX, also known as Waste Management. (The link provides some interesting history--it's a 1997 release from Greenpeace excoriating WMX for its terrible actions. Wonder if Greenpeace ever got in on the gravy-train described below?)

Basically, there is money to be made in incinerating certain forms of hazardous waste, and companies specialize in it. Then cement kilns found they could do it, too, and since the heat was useful to them, they charged only a third of what the incinerators were charging. The incinerators began setting up environment suits against the kilns.

"Examples of industry-environmentalist cooperation are numerous. Blakeman Early of the Sierra Club stated forthrightly that “The commercial waste industry has an interest in improving regulations sufficiently to drive mom-and-pop operations out of business.”
Adler notes that WMX, the largest waste management company in the United States, “has funded the National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Wilderness Society, and World Resources Institute, typically giving over $700,000 annually to environmental causes.”

A former director of environmental affairs for WMX, William Y. Brown, who also served as acting director of the Environmental Defense Fund, acknowledged, “We’re in a position to benefit from the same objectives that [environmental groups] are pursuing…. Stricter legislation is environmentally good and it also helps our business.”

It's no different from the "Regulation" of shoe-shine stands at airports, or of "barbering" services. It's merely elimination of the competition.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

HT: Arms and the Law