[This article is a response to Paul Baer et al., "Greenhouse Development Rights: A Proposal for a Fair Global Climate Treaty," Ethics, Place & Environment, volume 12, issue 3 (2009).]
In Free Enterprise Environmentalism, Walter E. Block argues that laissez-faire capitalism can address climate change more effectively than socialism and government regulation. Block advocates for the role of markets, free enterprise, limited government, and private property rights in service of environmental protections. Covering topics such as extinction, overpopulation, pollution, and resources exhaustion, this volume offers alternate solutions to environmental degradation than have been proposed by the political left.
However the best essay ever written on the environment is this one:
Rothbard, Murray N. 1982. "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution," Cato Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring; reprinted in Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, Walter E. Block, ed., Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1990, pp. 233-279; http://mises.org/story/2120; http://www.mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf
Another point to consider is that demarcating and enforcing a right, whether the ownership right of an individual in a free market system or the right to control everything claimed by central planners in a socialist system, has a cost attached to it.
Getting rid of something that is presumed to be a negative externality may offer a genuine benefit to some people, but doing so can't be rationally justified if the enforcement costs are too high. Who would want to pay five troy ounces of gold to get rid of one troy ounce's worth of pollution?
The advantage of free markets over central planners in this instance is that private owners can consult their own value preferences to decide whether or not it is worth the trouble to go after a polluter whose harmful emissions have invaded their own property. A system encumbered by central planning, on the other hand, can't even put a gold price on the cost of doing anything, let alone discern the disutility that non-central planners put on the emission.
If the empirical experience of socialist regimes teaches us anything, it is that central planners don't really care about the well-being of non-central planners notwithstanding the usual rhetoric to the contrary. In the real world, central planners care more about mobilizing their dysfunctional economies to the best of their ability to maximize their military strength and to crush any internal opposition, which leaves the environment highly expendable. Curbing pollution and waste is not the point of socialism, and under such a regime any watermelon who protests otherwise will find himself shipped off to the gulag alongside the pro-liberty dissidents, etc., if not summarily shot by the secret police.
Dear Dr. Block. Although I agree with many of your criticisms of the "watermelon" ideology, you should know that a private property right approach to environmentalism doesn't work either. For example: if even just *one* property right owner refuses to allow any kind of nuisance (whether noise or pollution) to hit his own property, you have to shut down an entire industry or do away with all the cars. The alternative is to "normalize" such a rights violation and pay the victim an indemnity that the (private) courts deem is "fair," which of course in the Austro-libertarian thought is impossible to determine because value is subjective.
Dear Vincent: Thanks for these excellent points. Best regards, Walter
I have written an entire book on environmentalism and I think I answer your objection therein:
Block, Walter E. 2021. Free Enterprise Environmentalism. Lexington books
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498586856/Free-Enterprise-Environmentalism
978-1-4985-8685-6 • Hardback • $105.00 • (£81.00)
978-1-4985-8686-3 • eBook • $45.00 • (£35.00)
file:///C:/Users/WBlock/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCache/Content.Outlook/Z3O4B0QW/Block_Flyer_2021_.pdf; https://www.springer.com/gp/instructors/textbook-copy-request-us/17556774;
In Free Enterprise Environmentalism, Walter E. Block argues that laissez-faire capitalism can address climate change more effectively than socialism and government regulation. Block advocates for the role of markets, free enterprise, limited government, and private property rights in service of environmental protections. Covering topics such as extinction, overpopulation, pollution, and resources exhaustion, this volume offers alternate solutions to environmental degradation than have been proposed by the political left.
However the best essay ever written on the environment is this one:
Rothbard, Murray N. 1982. "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution," Cato Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring; reprinted in Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, Walter E. Block, ed., Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1990, pp. 233-279; http://mises.org/story/2120; http://www.mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf
thanks, Gail
Another point to consider is that demarcating and enforcing a right, whether the ownership right of an individual in a free market system or the right to control everything claimed by central planners in a socialist system, has a cost attached to it.
Getting rid of something that is presumed to be a negative externality may offer a genuine benefit to some people, but doing so can't be rationally justified if the enforcement costs are too high. Who would want to pay five troy ounces of gold to get rid of one troy ounce's worth of pollution?
The advantage of free markets over central planners in this instance is that private owners can consult their own value preferences to decide whether or not it is worth the trouble to go after a polluter whose harmful emissions have invaded their own property. A system encumbered by central planning, on the other hand, can't even put a gold price on the cost of doing anything, let alone discern the disutility that non-central planners put on the emission.
If the empirical experience of socialist regimes teaches us anything, it is that central planners don't really care about the well-being of non-central planners notwithstanding the usual rhetoric to the contrary. In the real world, central planners care more about mobilizing their dysfunctional economies to the best of their ability to maximize their military strength and to crush any internal opposition, which leaves the environment highly expendable. Curbing pollution and waste is not the point of socialism, and under such a regime any watermelon who protests otherwise will find himself shipped off to the gulag alongside the pro-liberty dissidents, etc., if not summarily shot by the secret police.
Dear Dr. Block. Although I agree with many of your criticisms of the "watermelon" ideology, you should know that a private property right approach to environmentalism doesn't work either. For example: if even just *one* property right owner refuses to allow any kind of nuisance (whether noise or pollution) to hit his own property, you have to shut down an entire industry or do away with all the cars. The alternative is to "normalize" such a rights violation and pay the victim an indemnity that the (private) courts deem is "fair," which of course in the Austro-libertarian thought is impossible to determine because value is subjective.
The Red/Green Axis of CommunoFascist global tyranny.