Free Market Environmentalism
Terry L. Anderson
Language: English
Pages: 196
ISBN: 0813311012
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Suggests free market ideas as solutions to environmental problems. Property rights solutions that encourage market processes are proposed for public land management, outdoor recreation, water quantity and quality and ocean fisheries. Also discussed are the problems of global warming and acid rain.
the environment is somehow different and is too precious to be thrown to bulls and bears on Wall Street. The feeling that markets and the environment do not mix is buttressed by the perception that resource exploitation and environmental degradation are inextricably linked to economic growth. This view, which first emerged with industrialization, builds on fears that we are running out of resources. After all, if resources are finite and production to meet material needs uses up some of those finite
consumers, change is less costly. This condition imposes a strong competitive discipline. In general, information through prices, internalization of costs and benefits from monitoring by individuals, and agent discipline imposed by competition reduce measurement and monitoring costs in market processes. Measuring and monitoring the actions of political agents can be especially Rethinking the Way We Think 19 high at the national level.19 At lower levels of government, the possibility of voting
private property rights, and early laws provided ways to punish those who drove their stock from the accustomed range. The idea of accustomed right on the basis of priority rights was also reflected in the claim advertisements that appeared in local newspapers. At the time, it was easy for cattlemen to define their range rights: “I, the undersigned, do hereby notify the public that I claim the valley, branching off the Glendive Creek, four miles east of the Allard, and extending to its source on
economic theory that is not made explicit,” but there is little made explicit when we “abstract from the details of the political process” by presuming “that the wishes of the full citizenry are more properly catered to” in the political process. In short, the lens of free market environmentalism forces us to realize that incentives matter everywhere. Second, free market environmentalism focuses our attention on the costs of coordinating human activities. The scribblings of Nobel laureate Ronald
worth $400.59 Harmony, conservation, and lucrative sportfishing are the by-products of this locally managed fishery. The Cascapedia story is not the only community solution to recreation in Quebec. Quebec also has ZECs (Zones d’Exploitation Contrôlées) for hunting and fishing. A ZEC is an area of Crown land (land owned by the province) or section of a salmon river in which a locally based nonprofit corporation receives authority from the provincial government to develop and control recreation, set