Many politicians are touting “deregulation” as the economic miracle cure.
The logic goes something like this: Less government equals less regulation, which equals more corporate profit, which creates more jobs that result in an improved economy and freedom for all. A win-win, right?
No. From a corporation’s viewpoint, deregulation equals higher profits – a win. From a private citizen’s viewpoint, a regulation is a protection against harm done by corporations seeking to maximize profit at the cost of harm to the public. To eliminate regulation is to eliminate protections to the public. To eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency is to eliminate protections that guard our personal and public health.
Think about the consequences of loss of protections. Do you want to drink toxic, tainted water? Do you want to breathe polluted air that increases respiratory illness and increases health care costs? Do you want to eat fruit that was irrigated with hazardous water from recaptured fracking waste that increases your cancer risk? Do you want to hike along a favorite stream and see dead fish from dumped coal waste? Do you want to risk your child’s future quality of life from contaminated spills that are left with no corporate responsibility for clean up? We the people lose quality of life from deregulation. My rural Colorado town depends on clean air and water to attract visitors.
Next time you hear a legislator talk about deregulation, it is double talk for “I want you to think I am acting in your best interest when really I represent corporate profit before public protection.”
There are safer and cheaper sustainable energy alternatives available that create more jobs than fossil fuel energy. They are clean, inexhaustible and homegrown.
We need legislators who will lead our energy future away from finite and polluting energy resources to clean and limitless energy resources. We cannot burn our way to prosperity.
Contact Rep. Scott Tipton, Sen. Cory Gardner and Sen. Michael Bennet and request their leadership in public protection from environmental pollution, and in transitioning to clean, renewable energy.
Ed Atkinson
Durango
