Environment

From Libertarian Wiki

Orthodoxies are traditional and established beliefs. Basil Venitis, a libertarian politician of AthensB, notes that most environmental orthodoxies have major drawbacks. They usually overlook the biophysical factors and adaptive practices.

Venitis says that the usual orthodoxies of desertification, deforestation, soil erosion, and climate change have major faults. They are mostly the result of nature, not of human activity. Capitalism is the #1 friend of the environment; socialism is the #1 enemy of the environment. The closer a country is to pure capitalism, the cleaner its environment is. Socialist propaganda has created some framings against capitalism, which are exaclty the opposite of reality!

The keys to protecting the environment are the establishment and protection of property rights over all natural resources, including land, water, and air. Ownership provides an incentive to preserve the long-term value of the resource so that its use and resale will generate more money. For instance, loggers have a greater tendency to plant new trees when they own the land and thus have an economic stake in preventing erosion, compared to when they merely rent the land from the government. This provides a much more effective safeguard than relying on government to create arbitrary regulations; the politicians know that they can disregard long-term consequences since by the time these problems become evident, their term of office will be over.

Landowners should be allowed to sue others for pollution that harms their ability to peacefully enjoy their property. Under the common law, the property right over land extends from the atmosphere to the center of the earth in a cone-shaped fashion. If someone sends polluted water downstream to his neighbors, that constitutes an infringement on their property rights. Similarly, if one pollutes air that then floats into his neighbor's airspace (and possibly into his lungs), that is also a violation of his rights. These should be considered torts for which courts can issue the usual remedies, such as injunctions, damages, and specific performance.

Of course, there are a large number of minor polluters, such as automobile drivers. It is still possible to allocate costs to these individuals, however, through a system of pollution liability. When highways are privatized, the owner of each road will be responsible for the pollution of the customers or guests who drive on it. This, it will be possible for the affected property owners to hold him liable, since instruments can measure the amount of noise, fumes and other pollution emanating from a road. The road owners will have an incentive to mitigate such pollution, by keeping the worst polluters off of the road; constructing sound barriers; etc.

Pollution in the Chesapeake Bay can be solved through property rights. Those who own property along the shore can determine which farmers are sending harmful chemicals into the watershed (using water chemistry tests), and explain to them the benefits of switching to the more benign no-till methods of farming. This will surely be a more appealing option than being sued.

The issue of interstate trash, likewise, should be dealt with through property rights and liability. Since the owner of land on which a landfill is being placed will be responsible for any damages caused by leakage, he would do well to ensure that adequate pollution insurance has been purchased to cover it; and indeed, the community would be wise to insist on it, since the value of their property will be affected. The insurance companies will have a financial incentive to thoroughly inspect the landfill plans and to refuse to cover any poorly-designed landfills, or any companies that are run by disreputable persons who have incurred costly pollution claims in the past through their incompetence. Thus, the system will tend to drive polluters out of business, and the landfill industry will come to be dominated by efficient, environmentally-friendly operators.