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Protecting the environment
TownHall.com ^ | Wednesday, June 18, 2003 | Walter Williams

Posted on 06/17/2003 11:00:42 PM PDT by JohnHuang2

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townhall.com

Protecting the environment
Walter Williams (back to web version)

June 18, 2003

Disagreement with the world's environmentalist wackos doesn't mean that one is for dirty air and water, against conservation and for species extinction. Dr. Richard Stroup, Montana State University professor of economics and senior associate of the Center for Free Market Environmentalism, explains commonsense approaches to environmental issues in his new book, Eco-nomics: What Everyone Should Know About Economics and the Environment.

Stroup starts out with the first lesson of economics: There's scarcity. That means more of one thing means less of another. California's San Bernardino County was just about ready to build a new hospital. That was until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department discovered that the endangered flower-loving Delhi Sands fly was found on the site. The county had to spend $4.5 million to move the hospital 250 feet; it also had to divert funds from its medical mission to pay for mandated Delhi Sands fly studies.

Question: Was it worth it? On the benefit side, we have the survival of some Delhi Sand flies, but what about the cost side? How much pain and suffering and perhaps loss of human life was there because millions of dollars were diverted from the hospital's medical mission?

Stroup's analysis warns us that we must always attend to a regulation's unanticipated side-effects. In other words, beneficiaries of a regulation tend always to be easily detected, but the victims are invisible.

David Lucas owned shoreline property that the South Carolina government told him he couldn't develop, even though his next-door neighbors developed their property. South Carolina's regulation made his shoreline property virtually worthless. Lucas sued, and the U.S. Supreme Court forced the South Carolina government to pay him $1 million. Once the state was forced to pay Lucas $1 million, it changed its mind about the worth of keeping the shoreline undeveloped. In fact, it sold it to a developer.

South Carolina's actions demonstrate that incentives matter. Costs born by others will have less of an effect on our choices than when we bear them directly. Environmentalists love it when the government can force private citizens to bear the burden of their agenda, as opposed to requiring that government pay landowners for property losses due to one regulation or another. It's cheaper, and that means government officials will more readily cave in to environmentalists' demands.

In other words, regulations that stop a landowner from using his land because of the red-cockaded woodpecker, or prevent a farmer from tilling his land because of an endangered mouse, or prevent a homeowner from building a firebreak to protect his home produce costs that are privately borne. If government had to compensate people for regulations that reduce the value of their property, more intelligent decisions would be made. Besides, if a particular measure will benefit the public, why should its cost be borne privately?

Environmentalists go berserk whenever there's talk of drilling for the tens of billions of dollars worth of oil in Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge. Why? It doesn't cost them anything.

Here's what I predict. If we gave environmentalists Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge, you can bet your last dollar that there'd be oil drilling. Why? It would now cost them something to keep the oil in the ground. The Audubon Society owns the Rainey Preserve in Louisiana, a wildlife refuge. There's oil and natural gas on its property, and it has allowed drilling for over half a century. Not allowing drilling, in the name of saving the environment, would have cost it millions of dollars in revenue.

Stroup's Eco-nomics, available at stores and the Washington-based Cato Institute, is less than 100 pages long but contains powerful lessons for sensible approaches to the world's environmental issues.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Contact Walter Williams | Read Williams's biography

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TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: environment; walterwilliams
Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Quote of the Day by connectthedots

1 posted on 06/17/2003 11:00:42 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: farmfriend
fyi
2 posted on 06/18/2003 2:21:44 AM PDT by Free the USA (Stooge for the Rich)
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To: JohnHuang2
Dr. Williams fingers an important component of environmental radicals' political strategy: demonize those who oppose their enviro-fascist proposals as against the environment.

Never mind that we all share an interest in clean water and air. Never mind that governments everywhere have been the largest despoilers of these things, and that private parties have made the biggest difference in preserving them. If you're against draconian new laws about land use and effluents, you must want two-year-olds to dring arsenic and breathe cyanide! Case closed; hang 'em now.

Principled, market-driven environmentalism is beginning to show gains. Among other tracts, Peter Huber's book Hard Green is penetrating on the subject. So is Dixy Ray Lee's older volume Environmental Overkill.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

3 posted on 06/18/2003 5:50:32 AM PDT by fporretto (Curmudgeon Emeritus, Palace of Reason)
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To: JohnHuang2; marsh2; dixiechick2000; Mama_Bear; doug from upland; WolfsView; Issaquahking; amom; ...
Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.

4 posted on 06/18/2003 10:41:59 AM PDT by farmfriend ( Isaiah 55:10,11)
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To: farmfriend
BTTT!!!!!!
5 posted on 06/18/2003 10:54:17 AM PDT by E.G.C.
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To: fporretto
So is my book, Natural Process: That Environmental Laws May Serve the Laws of Nature, by Mark Edward Vande Pol.
6 posted on 06/18/2003 10:58:26 AM PDT by Carry_Okie (The environment is too complex to be managed by central planning.)
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To: E.G.C.; farmfriend
Folks are we headed in the right direction? In my opinion, we need to discredit the environmentalists, as liars. Discrediting them in court in, legislative hearing, and most important in the eyes of the public, their almost unanimous stance against high yield agriculture will go a long way tarnishing them. Showing pictures of staving Africans, standing around warehouses full of American corn, is just an example of what can be done.

There is not one shred of evidence that genetically modified food has harmed the environment or a single human being. Yet, environmentalists are telling African governments, the corn will poison you! If they are willing to kill people for their agenda, how can they be believed on other issues?

That is exactly how the environmentalists got so powerful. They caught big bussiness polluting and covering it up. They discredited them and rightly so. Since that time Bussiness, industry, and the public have embraced a clean and healthy environment. The environmentalists have never let up and are now pushing a draconian agenda.

We must regain our creditability and tarnish theirs. Then and only then, can we negotiate with them.
7 posted on 06/18/2003 1:16:30 PM PDT by nwconservative
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To: JohnHuang2
bttt
8 posted on 06/18/2003 5:05:45 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe (Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't)
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To: nwconservative
You make excellent points!
9 posted on 06/19/2003 5:25:01 AM PDT by countrydummy
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