14 Aug 2003 Eating, Having a Roof Over One’s Head — Definitely “Old Thinking”

There’s a bizarre point of view from a Baltimore Sun editorial:

Three-term Utah Gov. Michael O. Leavitt… wants to balance “an inherent human responsibility to protect the earth” with “an economic imperative… to do it less expensively.”

This philosophy sets off alarm bells.

As administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Mr. Leavitt would be charged with enforcing national clean air and clean water standards established by Congress in the 1970s because state and local governments weren’t doing the job.

As for balance, the term implies an inevitable trade-off between environmental quality and economic growth — i.e., how much devastation are we willing to tolerate for how many jobs?

If that’s Mr. Leavitt’s mindset, it’s old thinking, and it’s unacceptable.

Yeah, sure, Baltimore Sun. Its “old-thinking” to consider a proposed government policy’s impact on jobs.

We bet that’s not the Sun’s position when it editorializes on unemployment.