Posted on 05/14/2003 7:27:41 PM PDT by XHogPilot
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:42:29 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
We can't tell you how San Francisco International Airport managed to spend $74 million planning new runways, but we can tell you that one hay farmer up in the North Bay -- 36 miles from the airport -- is nearly $700,000 richer.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
It's called the enviro-racket. Enviromentalism for fun and profit.
All these mitigation schemes will invariably find an enviro-scam profitably positioned in the middle. E.g., Wildlands, Inc. in this story.
When simple bribery just isn't enough...
Me, the wife, and our daughters were hiking this weekend on the cliffs above the San Francisco waterfront from the ocean to the Golden Gate Bridge. Very beautiful forested trails. I told my daughters to enjoy it while they can, because when they have children it could all be gone.
Some enviro-wackos want to restore it to its native condition. All the trees were planted by Europeans over the last 225 years. Before that it was sand dunes, scrub-brush and marshes. Enviro-wackos forget that humans are a part of nature, and sometimes we improve the landscape and its better off in its altered condition.
Although as you know, I detest the racketeering aspects of the environmental move-mint, but your post raises a more serious point that I hope you'll give some reflection.
For the last umptyump millennia, the land mass of the United States has been under management by the residents. Every plant and animal species out there has been selected by its suitability under that management style (which wasn't so passive as is commonly believed). Suddenly, Europeans radically alter that dynamic by kicking out the residents, do whatever for a couple of hundred years, and when they no longer need it or something else looks more attracive, they leave, pave it, whatever.
Human society has found a profit in concentrating people for industrial purposes, as well as in specializing land use on an industrial scale. In doing so, it has, by and large, abandoned the traditional practice of committing part of that investment to managing a distributed human interface with the surroundings. Competition has driven out the smaller producer with more diversified interests in that land use. Many of those now abandoned lands are overgrown, have become packed with weeds and pests, or become fire hazards, and are suffering rather severe population imbalances (consider deer). Virtually all of it is hardly what anybody would rationally call "natural."
I promise you, a lot of this land is in dire need of repair. It won't "recover" by itself, and to believe it will is in most cases a myth. It doesn't know how to do it without people, because people have been a part of the land for one hell of a long time. Environmental "preservation" of "nature" may be the most radical change nature has ever seen.
That's what the Wildlands project would "preserve" with its "no entry" zones. Worse, it would connect those infested lands with those that aren't, a sure recipe for ecological disaster (and if you haven't witnessed the mess the Forest Service and the BLM has made, I suggest you do so).
Somebody needs to be there to fix it and I have no interest in handing that job to the current crop of university-brainwashed ideologues in our government resource agencies.
So why shouldn't taking care of nature be fun and profitable? Isn't that an economic activity with real worth that requires investment and risk? Isn't "nature" a land use with a number of potentially profitable economic uses? Isn't learning how to manage it more efficiently an accomplishment worthy of a profit? Don't we rely upon those systems for materials, entertainment, flood control, visual enjoyment, cleaning up our air and water, and providing us food? Doesn't nature require management for it to be productive? Doesn't a productive environment increase total wealth?
In my judgment, after over ten years of restoring my land, I can tell you it's one hell of a lot of work, the tools are lousy, the processes are not well understood, and government stands squarely in the way.
It's an armed monopoly in control of all land use. That's too much power that becomes power for sale. It derives its claims for takings and police power out of continuing problems, indeed, the worse they get, the more money and power an urban democracy gives them! That's a risk we cannot afford, and if you look at the West and you understood the potential versus what's been done, you'd swear that the US Government was in the business of making an uninhabitable desert out of it. Whole civilizations have been destroyed that way, and I'm not looking forward to a nation dependent upon communists in South America and Mexico for food.
There has to be a better way than environmental management by a an armed monopoly bureaucracy. They're wasting bucketloads of money, tying the economy in knots, and making us a state dependent upon global ologopolists for resources. Huge amounts of money are being wasted and even more wealth creating potential is being destroyed. So why shouldn't someone make sure that when we use nature those productive assets upon which we do depend are taken care of for a profit?
So, who should do it?
How should it be paid for?
How does a customer verify that the supplier is providing the service to contract?
How do they fix it if something goes wrong?
So, who should do it? Government? No thank you, it is an unaccountable, destructive system that is too prone to corruption. It must be done by the private sector.
How to pay for it? The real question is, if those things are of value, why aren't they profitable? Well the reason is that government has destroyed all profit potential in such a market with the power to take control of those producing assets without compensation.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a market in offsets. We DO expect the system to deal with the impact of industry, so why not pay somebody to assure that system performance meets the terms of the contract? It beats letting it go to hell in the hands of some bureaucracy.
If we are going to have people do that work, isn't it necessary to verify that they did what they said they would? Of course, but putting that power in the hands of government is too great a risk for policy choices reflecting political favoratism or outright corrupt payoffs. So... who? A contractual third party auditor who pays if they screw up but still has to compete for customers. Properly structured markets have checks and balances that are inherently stable.
This is the real opportunity to finally pay those people who have been forced to provide those services for free at gunpoint. Look at how the timber industry is forced to maintain fisheries, watershed performance, and habitat. Look at the way farmers are forced to manage their businesses to allow for some critter. To finally pay for those services puts less pressure on a resource supplier to cut corners because they finally have a way to balance competing interests in their land: pricing. At least when they market that offset, they'll have to show how it is useful in accomplishing that offsetting function. I suppose you think there's something wrong with that.
If they screw up, shouldn't a practitioner redress the loss? That's why we have insurance.
The Wildlands Project is a disastrous policy, from an ecological perspective alone. Private property and free markets can do the job, but only if allowed to do so. The government is making a mess of its environmental management and it's high time for a change.
Yes, it did. And your response was an ecological and free market tour de force.
I'm one of those conservatives who cares about the environment, too -- though not nearly so actively and acutely as yourself. My contribution is limited to taking a trash bag with me in the canoe, cleaning the trash on the river and at the camp sites.
No credit claimed, but it works as an analogy. It always amazes me a.) how much trash is out there and b.) why people are so callous about their impact on the environment.
But the Brazos River is only a micro example. The macro version is Steubenville. Or New Jersey.
And the motivation shouldn't be just environmental nagging to "pick up after yourself". Instead, it ought to be a legitimate respect for the value our environment represents -- in terms of health, economic productivity and posterity, not just because somebody might be visually offended.
I agree that mitigation is necessary and "making a market" for such projects is inherently a good idea. But, as we both know, the entire process has fallen into the hands of a.) government and its incompetent (if not corrupt) bureaucratic functionaries and b.) the even more corrupt and politically powerful "environmental movement". Under the circumstances, a corrupt few will make a fortune, the taxpayers will take a hit and the environment will actually suffer.
The case in hand is an extreme example, involving as it does the San Francisco ecoweenie bureaucracy and Wildlands mob.
But how do you structure a system that ensures against institutional idiocy, on the one hand, and rampant profiteering on the other? Regrettably, it seems necessary for a governmental body, preferably local, to set the standards and regulate the rules of the game. Given that requirement, it's only a matter of time until they make a hash of it.
It's a matter of designing a system of checks and balances. That's what my book is all about. It is a very simple idea, but to understand how it works is not, as one might expect of something capable of the kind of complexity nature presents. I'd give you a longer answer, but I have to run right now. Consider what's on the site, and if you have questions, please get back to me.
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