TGIF: Markets Clean Up

Donald Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University, has been a great defender of individual liberty for a long time. One of his favorite projects is pointing out how innovative and usually unnewsworthy market activity, to the extent that government keeps out of the way, increasingly helps us to live in cleaner, healthier surroundings. In other words, if "the environment" matters for human well-being -- and it certainly does -- the freer that markets are, that is, the freer that we are, the better for everyone. Freedom and the wealth it generates on net make our world better.

This has been known for a long time, but many people have never learned it. (Disclosure: Boudreaux hired me to edit The Freeman magazine in the late 1990s when he became president of the Foundation for Economic Education. Working for him was a pleasure.)

I should stop there and let Boudreaux explain what he means by the environment. It's not immediately obvious. He writes that

the relevant environment for humanity is not exclusively the outdoor and often-distant environment that we think of today when we encounter this word. Humans’ environment includes more than just the likes of the outdoor air that we breathe, the condition of the oceans and of far-away tundra, and the average temperature of the globe; humans’ environment includes also the cleanliness of the buildings in which we live, of the furniture on which we sit and sleep, of the clothing that we wear, and of the foods that we eat.

By implication, the world was pretty dirty before markets prevailed in the West. Just for example; think of all that horse manure, not to mention those rotting equine carcasses in the sometimes-dusty-sometimes-muddy streets before oil and the internal-combustion engine rescued us. Most cases are not as dramatic but are just as important.

Boudreaux explains that nine years ago he began a feature on his blog, Cafe Hayek, that he called "Cleaned by Capitalism." He writes, "Each post describes – and is typically accompanied by a photograph of –  an affordable and familiar modern good that makes humans’ immediate environment cleaner, safer, and more pleasant. Each of these goods is made available to the masses by innovative, competitive markets."

Keep in mind that the spread of at least semi-free markets made mass production of clothing and other basic household goods a feature of everyday life for the first time in history. Before that, production was for the aristocracy only. The rest of the people made do with a paltry number of homemade goods. That was the case for millennia.

Boudreaux wants to do more than broaden the definition of the word environment. As noted, he wants to illustrate "the practically countless ways that innovative capitalist markets cleanse our personal environments of filth and perils that pose a far greater and more immediate threat to us than do global warming and the other the environmental conditions that are today regularly featured in the news." (There's plenty of evidence that catastrophic warming or climate change is not happening. Look up the writings or YouTube videos of Stephen Koonin, who was a top energy physicist in the Obama administration.)

And, further, Boudreaux wants to

encourage readers to understand that, while capitalist production does indeed emit pollutants into the air and water, it also – and in the process – produces goods many of which make our everyday lives less polluted. Whatever are the costs of the "seen" environmental effects of industrial production – effects such as carbon emissions and the risk of oil spills – these effects must be weighed against the benefits, including the unseen environmental benefits, of the very industrial activities that have as a by-product these "seen" environmental effects.

Here Boudreaux reminds me of Julian Simon, the late economist who documented how much richer and cleaner the world had become because human beings ("the ultimate resource") are intelligent and enterprising. (See Simon's classics, The Ultimate Resource II and The State of Humanity.) He's also making a point that the philosopher Alex Epstein makes online and in many writings. (See Fossil Future.)

"There’s no question," Boudreaux winds up writing, "that the environment in which modern humans live is immeasurably cleaner, safer, and more pleasant than was the filthy and dangerous environment in which all of our pre-industrial ancestors lived." Amen.

But stay tuned. Boudreaux isn't resting on his laurels. He has promised to start a new series on his blog: "Soiled by Socialism" and is soliciting reader help in finding examples. He doesn't mean just socialism in other countries. See his article for a preview.

Additional reading: Saving the Environment for a Profit, Victorian-Style, by Pierre Desrochers, The Freeman, May 2003.

Who Are the Real Climate Change Deniers?

Seems to me that the real climate change deniers are those who say that but for human beings, the climate would not change or change very much.

A Question of Motives

People who regard themselves as members of the ideological environmental movement may or may not have good science on their side in any particular matter, but they do themselves no service when they speculate wildly about the motives of their opponents.

I frequently hear such environmentalists characterize their opponents as people who want to make the planet uninhabitable for human beings and other living things. I suspect I'm not alone in finding that motivation highly implausible, and I'm surprised that those who traffic in such accusations don't realize that they undermine their own cause when they try to sell that implausible story to the public. It may explain why they have yet to close the sale after all these years.

Note what I am not saying. I am not saying that those environmentalists accuse their targets of being in denial or of being ignorant about the alleged dangers of their policy preferences. No, they accuse them of wishing to destroy the planet. If you don't believe me, watch this video in which Noam Chomsky, a bright guy who has made many important intellectual contributions, does just that. (In this video Chomsky says that Trump is more dangerous than Hitler was because Trump seeks an end to life on earth.)

Are we really to believe that the individuals named as public enemies seek an end to life or just don't care if human life becomes impossible in the near or distant future? Do these people have no children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, or friends with such? Even in the unlikely case that the answer is no, what motive could they possibly have for not caring about what happens to humanity after they die? Greed? Don't many of them think they have enough money--or are we to believe they're all Scrooge McDucks?

My point is not to take the side of the alleged public enemies in this or that matter. It is only to insist that the environmentalists need a more plausible story for their opponents' policy preferences. But I've yet to encounter one offered by the environmental movement. Simply portraying the enemy as nihilist is inexcusable, not to say (as a friend put it) lazy. I have a hard time believing that anyone on the fence would find the standard claim convincing.

I suspect that the reason for this ridiculous tack is that to assume good-faith disagreement would violate the environmentalists' take-no-prisoners attitude. If they allowed for good faith in their opponents, they might then have to acknowledge that much of the environmentalists' apocalyptic claims are disputed by reputable and well-credentialed scientists--which is something ideological environmentalists are loathe to do. They'd much rather portray their adversaries as greed-crazed or religiously fundamentalist or ideological monsters, if not all three, however incompatible those things might be.

The principle of charity holds that you should take on your opponents' strongest case, even if no opponent makes that case himself. Lazily conjuring up the most malevolent case will fail to convince any decent listener. All it will do is reinforce the feelings of those already convinced. If the goal is to actually effect beneficial change, where's the gain in that?

That question may answer itself. Perhaps the goal is not to effect change but rather merely to engage in holier-than-thou self-pleasuring.

Appearance on Mike Beitler's Free Market Program

Here's the link. It's mostly about health care, but we covered cap and trade also.

No Need for Energy Subsidies

For a guy who claims to believe in limited government, President Bush is awfully good at dangling subsidies and threatening coercion when he wants to encourage or discourage something. That’s the lesson to take from his State of the Union Address.

Look at what he said about energy....

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "No Need for Energy Subsidies," at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Who or What is Heating up the Earth?

From the Telegraph, November 12:

Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.

In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.

The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.

Read the rest here.

Global Warming and the Layman

Global warming is a divisive issue. People are either believers or skeptics, with each side viewing the other with apprehension. I've sided firmly with the skeptics, but lately I have had a nagging concern. Like most people, I am not an atmospheric scientist. I have no firsthand way to evaluate a scientific claim for or against the existence of global warming. So what grounds have I for believing what one scientist says against the thesis over what another one says in favor of it?

No good grounds at all. . . .

This much I know: these are highly complex empirical questions. They are not a political, ethical, or ideological questions. Thus the answers must be left to the scientific process, preferably untainted by government control.

In the meantime, laymen committed to individual freedom have their own question to attend to: If potentially harmful manmade climate change is occurring, how can it be addressed without violating liberty?

Read the rest of this week's TGIF column at the website of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.