Environmentalism

Environmentalist Nonsense

by Scott McPherson December 1, 2003

The environmentalist movement has gone into overdrive over the newest trend in Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs). The Hummer, from General Motors, Ford’s Excursion, and now the Unimog from DaimlerChrysler are all driving our Green friends to distraction distraction because they have attained a new low in “excessive” gas consumption. Labeled “gas-guzzlers” and scathingly dishonored with the “Exxon Valdez Award for ...

Crowding Out the Crabbing Market

by Scott McPherson October 15, 2003

The Washington Times reported on October 7 that “a proposal to ban crabbing three days a week is netting opposition from crabbers who say their livelihoods are in danger.” According to state officials, harvests of the blue crab need to be reduced by 35 percent if the ...

Preserving Barns the Free-Market Way

by Scott McPherson September 15, 2003

There is a conflict over barns in New England. A man named Ken Epworth, a New Yorker, has formed a business called the Barn People, which specializes in disassembling 18th-century and 19th-century barns and reassembling them as attachments to expensive homes elsewhere. Locals are reacting angrily, accusing Epworth ...

Protecting Whales

by Scott McPherson September 8, 2003

The government of Iceland has recently commissioned a whaling ship to hunt and kill 38 minke whales to study the contents of their stomachs. According to the Washington Times (August 18), the Icelandic government claims the research is necessary “to measure effect on fish stocks such as ...

Private Roads and the Economics of the Environment

by Scott McPherson August 6, 2003

In the interest of battling automobile-created air pollution, environmentalists call for more public transportation — more buses and commuter trains and the higher taxes needed to fund them — to get people out of their cars. Granting, for the sake of discussion, that air quality is as poor as ...

Barges and Birds, Politics and the Market

by Bart Frazier July 25, 2003

In a move that delighted environmentalists, a U.S. district judge recently ordered the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) to lower the water level of the Missouri River in order to provide suitable nesting habitat for endangered bird species. However, the move will have detrimental effects on shipping, and the ...

The Lake of the Woods

by Bart Frazier July 16, 2003

Like most other Americans, this past Independence Day found me watching fireworks. I was with my family at Lake of the Woods, a private community in Orange County, Virginia, where we were all gathered along a lake’s edge with thousands of other people to watch one of the best ...

Free-Market Environmentalism

by Bart Frazier May 1, 2003

One of the most important lessons that economics teaches is that incentives matter. Economics is not a field that is normally associated with the environmental movement, but the recognition of the importance of incentives has led to a schism in the movement between those environmentalists who turn to the state to protect the environment and those who instead rely ...

When the Government Owns the Environment, Part 2

by Scott McPherson March 26, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 On December 19, 2002, I wrote about the Army Corps of Engineers’ practice of dumping toxic sludge into the Potomac River, in violation of the Endangered Species and Clean Water Act. I pointed out that this practice had been going on for decades before the Environmental Protection Agency decided to review the terms ...

Free-Market Environmentalism

by Bart Frazier March 7, 2003

One of the most important lessons that economics teaches is that incentives matter. Economics is not a field that is normally associated with the environmental movement, but the recognition of the importance of incentives has led to a schism in the movement — between those environmentalists who turn to the state ...

Hawks and the Free Market

by Bart Frazier January 1, 2003

Rosalie Barrow Edge should be considered a hero to libertarians and conservationists alike. In 1933, she founded Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Kempton, Pennsylvania. At a time in our country's history when the economy was a shambles and socialism was hip, Edge managed to establish the first refuge for hawks in the world without the aid of government. In the 1920s ...

When the Government Owns the Environment, Part 1

by Scott McPherson December 19, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2  Libertarians maintain that the best way to protect the environment is to keep as much of it in private hands as possible. Without fail, this position is ridiculed by “environmentalists” as utopian and impractical. What they propose instead is a regime of strict government control over wetlands, forestlands, and waterways to ensure that the ...