All Posts Tagged With: "sustainable development"
Consumption Must Be Curtailed to Sustain the Human Race?
Jared Diamond, in a January 2 op-ed in the New York Times, argues for a political solution to what he sees as a looming “consumption crisis” facing humanity. He notes that the current consumption of many resources, such as oil and metals, is roughly 32 times higher in the developed than in the developing world [...]
1Apr2008 | Gene Callahan | 1 comment | ContinuedAre High Taxes the Basis of Freedom and Prosperity?
In the November 2006 Scientific American, Jeffrey Sachs, economic consultant to governments and the UN, argues (yet again) for higher U.S. taxes and more government officials with ever-increasing powers over their subjects. These perennial and inevitable conclusions are hung (here) on a Nordic peg. According to Sachs, F. A. Hayek, “the Austrian-born free-market economist, . [...]
1Oct2007 | Sudha R. Shenoy | 9 comments | ContinuedFreedom Is the Environment’s Best Friend
John Semmens is a transportation policy analyst at the Laissez Faire Institute in Arizona. Every April 22 celebrations of Earth Day take place around the world. This can serve as a reminder to reflect on the status of our planet. Some believe the earth is in great peril and that stringent measures to restrain economic [...]
1Apr2007 | John Semmens | 1 comment | ContinuedRegulatory Roadblocks to Turning Waste to Wealth
Pierre Desrochers is a professor of geography at the University of Toronto. The small industrial town of Kalundborg, located 75 miles from Copenhagen, shouldn’t be on the radar screen of most visitors to Denmark. It has nonetheless become something of a Mecca for “sustainable development” theorists the world over. Kalundborg’s main attraction, apart from its [...]
1Sep2003 | Pierre Desrochers | 0 comments | ContinuedPlanned Chaos: Industrial Waste Recycling in Communist Economies
Pierre Desrochers is a research associate at the Montreal Economic Institute (www.iedm.org). Most advocates of “sustainable development” assume that traditional market incentives, such as the price system and private property rights, lead to wasteful and environmentally harmful practices. Not surprisingly, some proponents, such as bestselling authors Paul Hawken, Sim Van Der Ryn, and Stuart Cowan, [...]
1Jul2003 | Pierre Desrochers | 1 comment | ContinuedSaving 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 | ContinuedUnsustainable Development
Sound economic thinking lies in accounting for the secondary results of private and government actions.1 This observation is not limited to economics. It can be applied to all areas of human study, including political philosophy. Once learned, that lesson can prevent a great deal of human hardship. Take, for instance, a concept promoted by left-wing [...]
1Mar2003 | James Peron | 0 comments | ContinuedNightmare in Green
Jarret Wollstein is a founder and director of the International Society for Individual Liberty, a global libertarian organization with members in over 70 countries. He is also the author of eight books, including Lethal Compassion: Why Government Medicine Is the Cure that Kills (with Mary Ruwart). “The threat of an environmental crisis will be the [...]
1Sep1998 | Jarret B. Wollstein | 2 comments | ContinuedSustainable Development: Common Sense or Nonsense on Stilts?
Jerry Taylor is director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute and senior editor of Regulation magazine. The mantra of “sustainable development” is constantly on the lips of the international agencies and nongovernmental organizations helping lesser-developed countries. The concept seems innocuous enough; after all, who would favor “unsustainable development”? But the fundamental premise of [...]
1Sep1998 | Jerry Taylor | 3 comments | Continued-
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