All Posts Tagged With: "environmentalism"
I Recycle!
I spoke recently to a group of college students on the economics of environmental protection. As I spoke of the market’s amazing ability to conserve natural resources, one young man asked me, “Do you recycle?” “No,” I answered. “Well, thanks for the effort,” he replied with bitter sarcasm. Before I could explain my answer, he [...]
1May2002 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 16 comments | ContinuedBarefoot in the Park
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues. There’s an old story about two young brothers who loved to play in the woods around their house. In their games the clearings became the buffalo prairies of the west and the trees, on windy days, were galleons that sailed [...]
1Jan2002 | Ted Roberts | 1 comment | ContinuedWashing Your Clothes Washington’s Way
Our home is becoming less and less our castle as the government moves in . . . one room at a time. First there was the bathroom. Working toilets were outlawed in 1992 in favor of the environmentally friendly government toilets. (See my “The Federally Mandated Toilet Still Doesn’t Work,” November 2001.) On January 1, [...]
1Jan2002 | Michael Heberling | 6 comments | ContinuedThe Federally Mandated Toilet Still Doesn’t Work
Three years ago we moved into our newly built home in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The whole family was excited. While all new houses have some problems, I was not expecting the toilets to be among them. How could this be? After all, these toilets were brand new. As it turns out, that was precisely the [...]
1Nov2001 | Michael Heberling | 38 comments | ContinuedTen Years After the Bet: The More Things Change. . .
Michael Mallinger is a research associate at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. The late Julian Simon’s victory in his famous bet with Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich was a defining moment in the free-market movement’s victory over Malthusianism. In 1980 Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose five commodities that would become more expensive over the [...]
1Nov2001 | Michael D. Mallinger | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Perverse Popularity of Command and Control
Most government attempts to protect the environment involve imposing detailed regulations on how, and how much, pollution must be reduced. This command-and-control approach does reduce pollution, but as I explained last month, it does so at high cost.
1Sep2001 | Dwight R. Lee | 3 comments | ContinuedSpencer’s Law: Another Reason Not to Worry
One of the constant themes of today’s media is crisis and panic. Everywhere we look we are told there is some dreadful social problem, a threat to all that is good and true. Moreover, it is getting worse and will bring disaster upon all of us—unless “we do something.” (The authors of these jeremiads always [...]
1Aug2001 | Stephen Davies | 0 comments | ContinuedThe High Cost of Command and Control
We may not all agree on how much pollution to reduce, but we certainly should agree to reduce it as cheaply as possible. Since cleaning up at least cost is exactly the same as maximizing the cleanup for any given cost, cost minimization should appeal even to those who dislike thinking about the cost of protecting the environment.
1Aug2001 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Smart-Growth Scam
H. Nathan Hart recently graduated from Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama. Paul Cleveland is an associate professor of economics at Birmingham-Southern College. Transportation is essential to the daily life of nearly every American. Millions of people flock onto the freeways and streets to accomplish innumerable tasks each day. Americans love their cars. No other mode [...]
1Jul2001 | H. Nathan Hart | 4 comments | ContinuedEnvironmentalism as Though People and Facts Really Mattered
Christopher Lingle is a visiting professor of economics, ESEADE at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. One of the most compelling political issues of the new millennium is to discover ways to arrest and reverse the debilitation of our natural environment. To many observers, no less than a revolution is necessary to change public opinion and to implement [...]
1May2001 | Christopher Lingle | 0 comments | ContinuedTrue Ecology
Daniel Hager is a writer in Lansing, Michigan. Ecology is generally considered to be a branch of biology. It does not belong there. An examination of the subject indicates a better home for it. Ecology is defined as the study of organisms in relation to their animate and inanimate surroundings. It focuses on the connections [...]
1May2001 | Daniel Hager | 1 comment | ContinuedMaking Environmental Tradeoffs
Wealthy countries have it easy. Their citizens are richer. Their people enjoy healthier and safer environments. Yet Western nations are hindering Third World people from improving their lives—in the name of the environment.
Malaria is seen as a poor nation’s disease, but it once afflicted today’s industrialized states. Decades ago people in the United States and Europe suffered from this, one of history’s most ravaging diseases. But malaria has essentially disappeared in the West.
1May2001 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Efficient Amount of Pollution
When environmentalists argue that the costs of protecting the environment should be ignored, they quickly find themselves in a box. The only way to protect environmental quality in some ways (say, reducing water pollution) is by harming it in other ways (say, increasing air pollution).
1May2001 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Problem of Environmental Protection
A common belief is that economists don’t care much about the environment because they are preoccupied with money, markets, and material wealth. And when economists do consider ways to protect the environment, they emphasize benefits and costs, trying to express all values in terms of cash.
1Apr2001 | Dwight R. Lee | 2 comments | ContinuedKyoto Protocol’s Death Is a Tragedy?
Last November was a bad month for the Greens. While the battle to save their most important political leader raged in Tallahassee, the battle to resurrect their most important international initiative raged in The Hague. There, representatives from 180 nations fought desperately to save the Kyoto Protocol—the 1997 global-warming treaty—from political oblivion. The meeting in [...]
1Mar2001 | Jerry Taylor | 0 comments | ContinuedHard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists: A Conservative Manifesto by Peter Huber
Basic Books • 2000 • 288 pages • $25.00 hardcover; $15.00 paperback Peter Huber’s new book will delight as well as infuriate people who seek a consistent free-market approach to environmental issues. He delivers a devastating blow to the views of environmentalists who are antitechnology and antimarket, and does so with great vigor and wit. [...]
1Feb2001 | Joseph L. Bast | 0 comments | ContinuedClearing the Air: The Real Story of the War on Air Pollution
From the mid-1960s on into the early 1980s, it seemed obvious: Were it not for the benevolent protection provided by the federal government, America’s smoke-filled cities and slime-ridden rivers would have become environmental wastelands. The caves were beckoning. Somehow simultaneously struck dumb, citizens by the millions happily traded the last smidgen of clean air for [...]
1Oct2000 | Bruce Yandle | 0 comments | Continued-
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