IF YOU travel across America you will see some of the great sights of the natural world. Between Alaska鈥檚 forests and Florida鈥檚 swamps you will cross the Rocky Mountains, the deserts of Arizona, the Mississippi and much else. You will be struck by the magnificence of what you see. You will be struck, too, by the battering that nature has taken.
Vast swathes of Alaska鈥檚 Tongass, the world鈥檚 largest temperate rainforest, have been felled. The construction of dams to irrigate farmland has turned many Californian rivers into mere trickles. In the West, more than 100,000 wild animals, including coyotes, bears and mountain lions, are killed by government officials each year, avowedly to protect livestock. In Colorado, the land is pocked by mine spoil which leaks toxic chemicals into rivers. In Florida, run-off from sugar fields threatens the Everglades.
You may be surprised to learn, if you are American, that you have helped pay for this destruction. Government subsidies finance all these activities. Subsidies come in a variety of guises. They range from tax breaks for the oil and gas industry to the public funding of private-sector nuclear research programmes; from price supports for farmers to a dizzying array of measures that benefit logging and mining companies. Some subsidies are specifically designed to address the environmental damage done by others. For example, federal agencies have spent more than $3 billion on 鈥渟almon recovery鈥� programmes in the Colorado river basin. Why? Because a century of subsidised dam building has wiped out salmon spawning grounds.
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Earlier this year President Bush signed a bill to increase agricultural subsidies by 80 per cent over the next 10 years. The bill may win rural votes in next month鈥檚 mid-term elections 鈥� but at a huge cost to everybody else.
Take sugar. Florida鈥檚 agribusinesses have benefited from one of the many crop programmes that provide financial assistance for farmers and shield them from foreign competition. The programme is bad for US consumers, who pay higher prices than if they were able to buy sugar at world market prices; it discriminates against Third-World growers, whose produce is subject to quotas and tariffs; and it causes environmental damage.
Such subsidies also encourage farmers to generate surpluses which are dumped on the world market, depressing prices for others. US cotton subsidies will almost certainly destroy the livelihoods of large numbers of West African cotton farmers.
Mind you, US commentators are right to scoff at the outrage that wafts across the Atlantic: European nations are every bit as guilty of perpetuating the subsidy scandal. Indeed governments around the world spend a significant chunk of public finance on subsidies, around 3 per cent of their entire gross national product, or 10 times as much as all foreign aid. Yet there is a key difference between US subsidies and others. The links between politicians who vote for the subsidies and those who receive them are transparently obvious.
Since 1972, campaign spending has soared, and politicians have become increasingly reliant on donations from corporations, special interest groups and wealthy individuals. During a five-year period in the 1990s, the oil industry contributed over $25 million to congressional candidates, the coal industry over $20 million and the timber industry $16.5 million. This was money well spent, as far as the industries were concerned: during the same period, subsidies to the oil industry amounted to around $300 million, to the coal industry $1.5 billion and even more to the timber industry.
For both the environment and the vast majority of American taxpayers, most subsidies make little sense. So why do politicians vote for them? Besides currying favour with the interest groups that fund their campaigns, politicians must make alliances with one another. According to Peter VanDoren of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington DC, politics is a series of trades for votes. 鈥淵ou vote for me on this and I鈥檒l vote for you on that. The economy is worse off, but everyone gets re-elected.鈥� Florida鈥檚 politicians (or most of them) will vote to continue timber subsidies in Alaska because Alaska鈥檚 politicians will vote to continue sugar subsidies in Florida 鈥� however daft each considers the other鈥檚 subsidy to be.
The solution? Slash all environmentally harmful subsidies, suggests a campaign called Green Scissors. Its latest report reckons the US government could save $54 billion over five years by scrapping 78 specific programmes and subsidies. But if that is to happen, the slush money must be taken out of politics. For as long as politicians鈥� careers depend on the financial backing of big (and sometimes little) business, the subsidy gravy train will keep on rolling.