These lands are your lands

This is the 15th anniversary of the publication of Free Market Environmentalism by Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, the magnum opus for those who view property rights, local initiative, and economic incentives as friends, not enemies, of the natural world. Max Borders of TCSDaily has said that this is "the book that changed the way many people look at environmental issues." It is "the book that defined a generation of newer environmentalists, a generation that is friendly to markets, to green values, and to the idea that these are not mutually exclusive."

For Anderson and Leal, "At the heart of free market environmentalism is a system of well-specified property rights to natural resources." "Whether these rights are held by individuals, corporations, non-profit environmental groups, or communal groups, a discipline is imposed on resource users because the wealth of the owner of the property right is at stake if bad decisions are made," argued Anderson and Leal, who are part of PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center, in Bozeman, Montana, which is in the vanguard of free market environmentalism. They cite the Nature Conservancy (TNC) as "an excellent example of how free market environmentalism works." TNC is the world's largest land trust with a million members and supporters which has protected 117 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide. Its primary mission is to protect the highest value expressions of biodiversity.

ANDERSON AND LEAL challenged the reigning paradigm of scientific management of public lands through the instrumentality of the federal government. This was the legacy of Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service (1905-1910) and the Progressive Movement which sought to rely on government experts to regulate and prioritize the multiple uses of land through an administrative or political process. The insights of Anderson and Leal as they relate to the sausage making which is public lands management were revelatory:

There is good evidence that political land management has ignored important recreational and amenity values and that there is potential for providing them through markets in ways that promote harmony between development and ecology.

Incentives matter.That is a bedrock principle of free market environmentalism. There is also the appreciation for the inadequacies of information and the necessity of trade-offs, both of which make "political" management difficult. These realities can trump the best of intentions:

Even if the superintendent of national parks believes that grizzly bear habitat is more valuable than more campsites, his good intentions will not necessarily yield more grizzly bear habitat. In a political setting where camping interests have more influence over a bureaucrat's budget, his peace and quiet, or his future promotion, intentions will have to override incentives if grizzly bear habitat is to prevail. But if a private resource owner believes that grizzly habitat is more valuable and can capitalize that value, then politics will not matter.

If you consider all the infamous battles over public land use, you can appreciate how "scientific management," at least on federal lands, degenerates into the political equivalent of mud wrestling: owls versus logging, salmon versus irrigation and dams, snowmobiling versus cross-country skiing, grazing versus biodiversity.

There are, of course, countervailing arguments, based on equity and ecology, which point to the benefits of public lands. Access is one. Scale, in terms of watersheds, ecosystems, and vistas, is another. But as the TNC example proves, free market, private sector approaches can compensate for or overcome the disadvantages of political management of landscapes.

Free Market Environmentalism also emphasized the tendency of the political sector to externalize costs. The Holy Grail of most economists is to internalize costs, i.e., make those who benefit from the economic activity bear the costs or avoid the spillover effects, e.g., pollution, from their activities. This encourages efficiency and equity by discouraging waste and harm.....

The arguments of free market environmentalists are quintessentially Lockean with their emphasis on well-specified, defendable, transferable property rights. These techniques can work very well for certain consumptive uses such as hunting for fee, or individual fishing quotas for marine fishing allotments. However, for a property rights approach to succeed environmentally in these and other areas such as air and water quality, it is often necessary to adopt some regulatory drivers or mandates to create mechanisms such as cap-and-trade programs which allow for the sale of credits generated by a discharger who can reduce pollution more efficiently than others.

To put it another way, while libertarians view free market environmentalism as an end in itself, many others will view it as a means of achieving community or ethical norms of environmental stewardship. Fred Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute describes the latter position as "free-market socialism," but a Burkean conservative might be more forgiving.

But these are abstract questions which need not worry us. There is ample room to inject more freedom, incentives, and efficiency into our existing regulatory programs while pursing this new paradigm in numerous areas of resources management and protection, up to and including biodiversity or ecosystem protection.

More here




The case of the DDT deniers

Poor little Kenya. That's the message the media have been sending as the United Nations and European nations hold out this African country as the poster child of America's environmental sins. In the weeks leading up today's presentation of oral arguments in Massachusetts v. EPA - the Supreme Court case in which northeastern states are suing the Bush administration to regulate carbon dioxide as a "pollutant" under the Clean Air Act - global-warming alarmists and the media have been pointing to malaria epidemics in the cooler regions of Kenya as proof of the harmful effects of human-induced "climate change."

At the United Nations global-warming summit earlier this month in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi, the Associated Press breathlessly filed a dispatch citing Kenya as the prime example of how "a warmer world already seems to be producing a sicker world." The article proclaimed that because global warming was "disrupting normal climate zones" in Kenya, "malaria epidemics have occurred in highland areas where cooler weather historically has kept down populations of the disease-bearing mosquitoes."

The AP article followed the predictable pattern of blaming America for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, describing how the mostly Europeans signatories were discussing "how to draw the United States into a plan for mandatory emission caps." Many friend-of-the-court briefs point to recent cases of malaria appearing in the world's cooler regions to try to persuade the Supreme Court that carbon dioxide is already affecting public health and thus should be regulated. With examples such as Kenya, they are likely trying to persuade swing justices, such as Anthony Kennedy, who increasingly weigh international considerations in their judgments about laws.

Al Gore's book and DVD, An Inconvenient Truth, also showcases Kenya. Recent malaria outbreaks in the city of Nairobi, Gore proclaims, show that "now, with global warming, the mosquitoes are climbing to higher altitudes." At the Nairobi summit, U.N. head Kofi Annan also turned up the heat by proclaiming that climate change "is a threat to health, since a warmer world is one in which infectious diseases such as malaria . will spread further and faster." Annan then pointed his finger at what he called "the few diehard skeptics" that "try to sow doubt," concluding that "they should be seen for what they are: out of step, out of arguments, and out of time."

But when it comes to global warming and malaria, many of the "diehard skeptics" who are "out of step" with Annan and the media are prominent scientists who have produced studies published by the U.N.'s own World Health Organization. Research papers from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show not only that global warming is not to blame for malaria in Nairobi and the highlands, but that flawed environmental policies are the real culprit. We indeed should cry for Kenya, but our tears need to be directed at the right target. In Kenya and elsewhere, it is modern environmentalism that is "producing a sicker world." And it is now primarily the U.N. and Europe that are blocking Kenya from using the best tool to fight her malarial epidemics. That tool is the "environmentally incorrect" insecticide DDT.

If the AP and other news services had bothered to talk to critics of global-warming alarmism or had even done a simple Google search with words such as "Kenya," "malaria," and "history," they would have discovered a remarkable fact: Epidemics of malaria in Nairobi and in the highlands are nothing new under Kenya's sun. They have occurred many times before in this century. In those regions of Kenya, as elsewhere, malaria was greatly reduced by the use of DDT to combat the mosquitoes spreading the disease. And there as elsewhere, malaria came back with a vengeance after DDT use was halted due in large part to the scare-mongering of Rachel Carson and other enviros.

If Annan, Gore or the AP had bothered to look at a comprehensive 1999 WHO report published in conjunction with the U.N. and World Bank's Roll Back Malaria partnership, they would have come across this startling conclusion about malaria in the Kenyan highlands: "malaria among highland populations is better described as a re-emerging [underlining in original] problem rather than a new, unprecedented phenomena." This paper, written by scientists at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, documents that malaria "[e]pidemics in highland Kenya, varying in magnitude, location, and effect, were to recur throughout the 1940s." As for Nairobi, that city experienced malaria outbreaks in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, according to the WHO report, which is entitled "The epidemiology, politics, and control of malaria epidemics in Kenya: 1900-1998."

What brought an end to malaria in these regions for decades until it recently resurfaced? In substantial part, the spraying of DDT. "Following concerted attempts to interrupt transmission during the 1950s and 1960, . malaria risks declined significantly," says the WHO study. And DDT was a large component of these "concerted attempts." According to the WHO paper, authorities in Kenya began spraying DDT in the 1940s, with an immediate 98 percent reduction in some regions. The report credited this spraying in substantial part for malaria not reoccurring in Nairobi after a flood in 1961.

The WHO report also casts a skeptical eye on climate playing any significant role in Kenya malaria resurgence. Measuring temperature and rainfall in Kenya's Kericho district in the highlands, the study states that "there is no obvious effect of `warming' in this area since 1967." The U.S. CDC reported similar findings in 2005. The CDC study concluded: "Doubts exist as to the plausibility of climate change as proximate cause of epidemic malaria because global warming cannot explain the World War II epidemics. Dramatic increases in malaria in the 1990s are not mirrored by prospectively collected climate data." And malaria researchers have also noted that the disease was endemic in many of other regions of the world, including the American South, until DDT eradicated malaria in those places after World War II.

But the malaria increases do seem to be mirrored in the reduction of DDT use. After the unfounded hysterics of Silent Spring author Rachel Carson and other eco-activists, DDT began to be used in Kenya less and less. Supply was restricted by U.S. and other nations' bans, and in 1990 Kenya itself outlawed the insecticide's use. Now there is extensive debate in Kenya, as elsewhere, about bringing back DDT. Two of the things that may be holding Kenya back from doing this, according to the online magazine Science in Africa, are the United Nations and the European Union. Although the WHO has commendably now called for DDT's use in anti-malaria efforts, the U.N. Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants phases out DDT. It does have an exception for health reasons, but imposes expensive paperwork requirements on countries that use the substance. The European Union is also shedding crocodile tears for Kenya. "Europe is tightening its restrictions on insecticide residues on East African products," according to the magazine, and this is discouraging DDT's use, even though it would not be used in agriculture.

Imposing strict Kyoto-like reductions on carbon dioxide may worsen Kenya's public-health systems, as well as those of other countries including our own, by making electricity use more expensive in setting such as hospitals. My colleague Marlo Lewis delves into more of these details in his report, "A Skeptic's Guide to An Incovenient Truth." Critics of global-warming alarmism are often slammed as "deniers." But to save Kenya and other poor nations from the ravages of malaria, we need to stand up to the activists and bureaucracies who should be called the DDT deniers.

Source





Australian government points out the high cost of "green" power

THE switch to "clean green" energy sources will cost households up to 40 per cent more on their power bill, Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane has said. Mr Macfarlane said it was inevitable there would be "big jumps" in power bills, but said most people were unaware of the looming increases. "I don't think the consumers fully understand the price tag associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions," he told The Courier-Mail in an exclusive interview. "There is no doubt that if we are going to lower greenhouse gas emissions then electricity is going to cost significantly more - for consumers it will be anywhere between 20 and 40 per cent."

Mr Macfarlane said the price rise would occur during the next decade as the nation moved to cleaner, but more expensive energy sources such as clean coal technology. His estimate of a jump of up to 40 per cent in power bills is at the high end of industry expectations. But with the average annual household electricity bill in southeast Queensland about $1300 to $1400, a 40 per cent price rise would add more than $500 - or $125 a quarter - to the average power bill.

Last month, nuclear advocate Ziggy Switkowski said the increase in power bills would probably "not be noticeable" for consumers. But Mr Macfarlane said the cost of electricity production from coal-fired powered stations would almost double from $35 a megawatt-hour to more than $60 as gas emissions were cut. Coal is the main source of electricity and delivers 90 per cent of Queensland's power.

Labor's climate change spokesman, Peter Garrett, yesterday accused the Government of failing to take action on global warming and said it was impossible to make predictions about future energy prices. "In the absence of any targets, timelines and any certainty in greenhouse gas reductions the Government effectively leaves the issue of prices up in the air," Mr Garrett said. Prime Minister John Howard has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement that sets targets for cutting emissions but earlier this month set-up a taskforce to examine a global emissions trading system.

Mr Macfarlane angrily rejected the accusation the Government has failed to act and said more than three years ago it began pursuing technology-based solutions. He believes it is time for a detailed debate about the impact of cutting emissions and is highly critical of those who promote wind and solar power as a potential solution to future energy needs. He said solar power was four to five times more expensive than electricity from coal and that wind power was twice as expensive - even though it was heavily subsidised. "While the energy source is free, converting that to electricity is expensive," he said of wind and solar power. The Government believes nuclear energy can be a future source of clean energy, but Labor has ruled it out as too dangerous.

All nations, including Australia, are under pressure to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as a blanket of carbon dioxide around the earth and is blamed for heating up the atmosphere. Labor's industry spokesman Kim Carr says the longer the nation waits to change energy sources the more it will cost.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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