Center for Social Innovation

World Trade Organization protesters and other globalization foes may have one less fear to fret about. Although manufacturers in the United States are churning out more and more products, their smokestacks are belching out less and less air pollution — and not just because companies are making poor countries do their dirty work. Instead, green technologies are largely clearing the air, finds Arik Levinson, a professor of economics at Georgetown University.

“A lot of [activist] groups think of the environment vs. economics as a zero-sum game,” says Levinson. “But in this case, manufacturing grew, and the environment also improved, mostly because of technological advances” that make industries cleaner, he says.

In his fine-grained analysis, Levinson first broke down the U.S. manufacturing sector into 450 separate industries. He ... Read more