All Posts Tagged With: "environmentalism"

The Progressive Era’s Derailment of Classical-Liberal Evolution

Fred Smith is president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It is true that where a considerable part of the costs incurred are external costs from the point of view of the acting individuals or firms, the economic calculation established by them is manifestly defective and their results deceptive. But this is not the outcome of [...]

1Jun2004 | Fred Smith | 3 comments | Continued

The Irrational Precautionary Principle

Chlorine is a common chemical. It’s estimated to be used in the production of 80 percent of all pharmaceuticals. But like most chemicals it can cause problems depending on the dose, what it is mixed with, and how it is used. On one hand, it is used to disinfect drinking water and saves millions of [...]

1Apr2004 | James Peron | 1 comment | Continued

A Museum You Don’t Want to Miss

More than 150 years ago Karl Marx predicted that communism was inevitable. History, he claimed, was marching inexorably toward a communist paradise. In hindsight it would appear that if anything about communism was inevitable, it was that it would sooner or later be relegated to the status of museum relic. In the capital city of a formerly communist country in eastern Europe, that’s exactly what has happened.

1Mar2004 | Lawrence W. Reed | 1 comment | Continued

The Scapegoat Utility Vehicle

Sam Kazman is general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (www.cei.org), a Washington-based free-market advocacy organization. First sin, then treason, and finally, reckless idiocy. For owners of sports utility vehicles (SUVs), that pretty much sums up the last holiday season. They went into Thanksgiving under fire from the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign. Then the [...]

1Jul2003 | Sam Kazman | 0 comments | Continued

Chemical Hysteria and Environmental Politics

Contributing editor Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books. Chemicals are one of the wonders of human creation. They help heal and feed us; they help fuel our autos and heat our homes; they help produce toys and computers. Yet [...]

1Jul2003 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | Continued

Washington’s Centrally Planned Heating and Cooling

While the Clinton administration had eight years to “save the environment,” it waited until the final days to push through a flurry of questionable environmental regulations. Among these was the regulation that would require increasing the efficiency of central air conditioners and heat pumps by 30 percent. In the arcane language of the energy business, [...]

1Jul2003 | Michael Heberling | Comments Off | Continued

The Unsustainable Politics of Natural Capitalism

Pierre Desrochers is research director at the Montreal Economic Institute (www.iedm.org). In their bestseller Natural Capitalism, a book so heartily praised by environmentalists and business executives that its American edition sold out before its publication date, authors Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins indict traditional capitalism as a “financially profitable” but “nonsustainable aberration [...]

1Jun2003 | Pierre Desrochers | 0 comments | Continued

Saving the Environment for a Profit, Victorian-Style

Pierre Desrochers is research director at the Montreal Economic Institute (www.iedm.org). In the mind of the 21st-century environmentalist, Victorian cities and towns evoke images of black coal smoke and unsanitary conditions. For most people of the time though, they were one of humanity’s supreme achievements. Not as clean as the countryside, no doubt, but thriving [...]

1May2003 | Pierre Desrochers | 2 comments | Continued

Is Greed Green?

Pierre Desrochers is research director at the Montreal Economic Institute (www.iedm.org). Devising prescriptions for “sustainable development” has made the fortune of a number of academics and consultants and provided a new raison d’être for countless bureaucracies. According to these “sustainability experts,” since the dawn of the industrial age the goals of economic growth and enhanced [...]

1Apr2003 | Pierre Desrochers | 1 comment | Continued

The World Is Dying, So Tax the Rich?

In a September 2, 2002, op-ed in the Washington Post, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan sets out what he believes should be the world’s agenda for the next century. He says we face “the twin challenges of poverty and pollution,” and that if we are to end the “wanton acts of destruction and the blithe [...]

1Jan2003 | James R. Otteson | 1 comment | Continued

Living with Mass Transit

The foes of the automobile have long sung the praises of mass transit as the savior of Mother Earth. The automobile pollutes and enables human beings to spread out over the surface of the earth, paving over an alarming amount of green land. Automobiles regularly kill more people than all of our wars. It’s utter [...]

1Sep2002 | Stephen Browne | 0 comments | Continued

The Economics of Ecology: Angry Planet or Beautiful World?

“The bright promise of a new millennium is now clouded by unprecedented threats to humanity’s future.” -WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE, 20001 “We know that the environment is not in good shape. . . . My claim is that things are improving.” -BJØRN LOMBORG2 Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish professor of statistics who was an environmental activist and [...]

1Sep2002 | Mark Skousen | 0 comments | Continued

The Contradictions of Capitalism

We advocates of individual rights and free markets can’t win the intellectual debate with the ideological left. That’s because there is no intellectual debate with the left. There can’t be a debate since the opponents of capitalism are simply not open to rational discussion. They know that capitalism is inherently evil, and no argument, no [...]

1Aug2002 | James Peron | 0 comments | Continued

Where’s the Objectivity?

During a recent scandal, William Bennett wrote a book titled The Death of Outrage. The bigger scandal, however, is the death of objectivity, or the ability to evaluate an argument or claim with detachment. Many people look only to see if it supports their agenda. If it does, it’s good; if it doesn’t, it’s bad. [...]

1Aug2002 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued

Capital Letters

The Roll of Toll Roads To the Editor: I liked Scott McPherson’s article ["Private Road to Freedom," April] but was somewhat surprised that he made no mention of the fact that private toll roads were all this country had when roads were first developed. It was only when local governments started to interfere by insisting [...]

1Aug2002 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued

The Mugging of an Environmental Skeptic

When I read Bjørn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist I felt a sense of déjà vu. As excellent as it is, what Lomborg has to say—that the world is not going to hell—has been said before. But it was ignored because it was said by a brilliant man, the late Julian Simon, who was considered politically [...]

1Jul2002 | James Peron | 1 comment | Continued

The Impossibility of Harming the Environment

“The ‘polluter pays principle’ states that whoever is responsible for damage to the environment should bear the costs associated with it.” —United Nations Environmental Programme1 The “polluter pays principle” appeals to our sense of justice. People should be held responsible for their actions, and polluters who cause damage to others should “pay” for that damage. [...]

1May2002 | Roy Cordato | 0 comments | Continued
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