OPINION/COMMENTARY

Property Rights Improve Environment, Book Says

Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close Independent Institute, 2005 480 pages, $22.95 paper, ISBN 0945999976 The American public has shown significant concern for environmental quality since the first Earth Day in 1970, yet the maze of environmental laws and regulations enacted since then has fostered huge government bureaucracies better known for waste and failure than for innovation and success. In Re-Thinking Green, 22 economists and political scientists explain how environmental quality can be enhanced more effectively by relying less on government agencies, which are increasingly politicized and unaccountable, and more on environmental entrepreneurship and the strict enforcement of private property rights. The environmental bureaucracy has grown in size and scope because of a misguided belief that unless mankind reduces consumption of natural resources, cataclysmic environmental disasters will occur. "Sustainable development" is the fashionable but nebulous term associated with proposals to deal with the limiting of growth the environmentalists call for. It focuses primarily on limiting, if not eliminating, private land ownership. The authors of Re-Thinking Green brilliantly describe the fallacy in this type of thinking, and along the way they completely defrock unfounded concerns regarding population growth and the biggest environmental scam of them all: global warming. Re-Thinking Green does an excellent job of explaining, for example, the total failure of the Endangered Species Act. This 1973 law not only has a dismal record of reinvigorating endangered species populations, but in the process of failing it confiscates private property without offering any compensation to the citizens whose property rights have been violated. The authors contend that a law rewarding property owners for acting as stewards of endangered species would be far more successful than one that encourages property owners to do everything possible to avoid having endangered species take a liking to their land. Similarly, the authors deftly expose "smart growth" as a semantic fraud that subsidizes high-density urban living while creating the undesirable side effects of unaffordable housing, air pollution, and increased traffic congestion. The book focuses largely on Portland, Oregon, which has adopted many of the failed central planning techniques of the old Soviet Union....

Big stake in wetlands case

Landowners with so much as a puddle on their property should prepare for a showdown: Tomorrow the U.S. Supreme Court is going to hear two cases that might settle once and for all whether the 1970 Clean Water Act allows federal bureaucrats to regulate any wetland anywhere -- as they are effectively claiming -- or if there are some constitutional limits to their reach. No doubt the bureaucrats will rattle off a litany of supposed environmental benefits to justify their ever-extending tentacles to the court. But what the justices won't hear from them is the cost to the economy. The more egregious of the two cases involves John Rapanos, a pugnacious developer, who has become something of a cause celeb among property rights advocates. Federal bureaucrats began harassing him 20 years ago when he moved some dirt on his property without first obtaining a wetland permit. Despite repeated lawsuits, he refused to cave in to their demands on grounds that their jurisdiction ended 20 miles away from his property -- where the nearest navigable waters were located. What's more, apart from two little wet spots that he was not planning to touch, his property was bone dry, thanks to its sandy soil. Indeed, if he needs a federal permit, then potentially every property owner housing the smallest pond or puddle needs one. (It costs on average $300,000 to obtain this permit). This surely can't be the intention of the Clean Water Act, he argues. But if it is, Mr. Rapanos maintains, then the act itself violates the Constitution's Commerce Clause, which limits Uncle Sam's reach only to areas abutting navigable waters. Setting aside the serious constitutional issues involved, what are the economic costs of such federal mandates?....

Keeping Our Cool

"With God's help, we can stop global warming for our kids, our world and our Lord." - Television spot by Christian evangelical leaders A group that has historically taken a back seat on ecological issues is now coming to the forefront of environmental advocacy. Starting with the formation of the Evangelical Environmental Network in 1995, evangelical Christians have supported a variety of environmental initiatives from the renewal the Endangered Species Act to the “What Would Jesus Drive” campaign. But those proposals pale in comparison to the latest target of eco-spiritual concern: global warming. Just this month, eighty-five influential evangelicals met calling for the passage of legislation to reduce greenhouse emissions. They represent a growing number of Christians, like Christianity Today columnist Andy Crouch, who believe that global warming is a foregone fact and that man-generated gases are the reason. While no credible authority denies that greenhouse gases have an effect on temperature, there is considerable disagreement on 1) their contribution to the myriad of other known and unknown causes, 2) whether the effect is positive, negative, or neutral, and 3) the validity of long-term predictions. Nevertheless, the idea one receives from the media is that global-warming science is all but settled; and if big business lobbyists weren’t pumping corporate profits into the pockets of politicians, we could be well on our way to a solution. Over and against that notion, Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT professor of meteorology and panelist for the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report says, "Our primary conclusion was that despite some knowledge and some agreement, the science is by no means settled. We are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future." Dr. Lindzen is far from alone. In an open letter to Senator John McCain, co-sponsor of the Climate Stewardship Act, eleven climate scientists challenged the oft-cited Artic melt phenomenon as evidence of global warming. And there are countless other credentialed scientists who are just as skeptical of the problem....

Indicted Eco-Terror Teacher Has A History Of Arson Instruction

Animal-rights and environmental extremist Rodney Coronado, charged yesterday with teaching other activists how to build firebombs during an August 2003 speech, gave a similar tutorial at Washington, DC’s American University in January 2003. Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom announced that video B-roll of Coronado’s earlier bomb-making demonstration is available to the media. Center for Consumer Freedom Director of Research David Martosko said: “Federal agents should be congratulated for taking a dangerous animal-rights militant off the streets. Hopefully, the rest of the animal liberation movement’s violent underground will continue to get this sort of scrutiny from law enforcement. And that must include a close look at the ‘mainstream’ activist groups, including PETA, that have given people like Rod Coronado aid and comfort.” Coronado spent 57 months in prison during the 1990s for his role in an animal-rights arson that destroyed a research facility at Michigan State University. Court records show that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) president Ingrid Newkirk “arranged … days before the MSU arson occurred” [emphasis in the original court documents] for Coronado to send her overnight packages containing stolen documents from inside the lab and a videotape of the arson fire being started. A copy of the U.S. Attorney’s Sentencing Memorandum in the MSU case is also available. PETA gave Coronado over $70,000 for his unsuccessful legal defense....

GRAND CANYON AIR TOURS MEET NATURAL QUIET RULES

A federal advisory group convened by the National Park Service (NPS) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) meets today in Phoenix, Arizona, to discuss, among other issues, the substantial restoration of natural quiet at Grand Canyon National Park in the wake of a study last month that found that recreation air tour operators are in compliance with those agencies’ natural quiet rules. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, in a January 27, 2006, report, found that air tours operators comply with the requirement of natural quiet in more than half of the park 75 percent of the time. That finding will be presented to this week’s scoping meetings, which precede release of an environmental impact statement by the agencies. “That air tour providers, given all they have done and all the money they have invested over the years, are in full compliance with the natural quiet rules is no surprise to those familiar with this issue,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represented the air tour providers in federal court. “We hope common sense will prevail and those who provide such an indispensable service to people unable to see Grand Canyon in any other way will be allow to operate fully and economically.” In April 2000, the NPA and FAA issued regulations pursuant to the Overflights Act of 1987, which mandates restoration of natural quiet in Grand Canyon National Park while preserving recreational air tours. The U.S. Air Tour Association and some of its members challenged those rules alleging that they were based on “junk science,” were arbitrary and capricious, failed to comply with various federal laws, and violated the constitutional rights of individual operators. In August 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the rules but also ordered the agencies to include all aircraft that over fly Grand Canyon, including military and commercial. Air tour providers continued to maintain that Grand Canyon air tours, which have been taking place for more than 70 years, have achieved natural quiet and that even greater reductions could be achieved by the use of quiet technology rules, which the NPS has yet to implement. The Volpe Center study vindicates that view....

Addicted To Corn?

With President Bush reaffirming his belief that America is “addicted to oil” in a speech yesterday in Milwaukee, it is worth while to look at the feasibility of some of his proposals, such as this one: We're also supporting the development of advanced fuels that can replace regular gasoline. Here again I'm talking to folks who know what I'm talking about -- I'm talking about ethanol. You've got a lot of it here in Wisconsin because you've got corn. Ethanol is produced -- primarily produced from corn; it's blended with gasoline to produce clean and efficient fuel. What are the chances that ethanol can replace gasoline? According to Iowa Corn, one bushel of corn can produce 2.7 gallons of ethanol. Let’s assume that all the bushels of corn that the U.S. produced—about 11.8 billion in 2004—were used to produce ethanol. Doing a little math, it means that we could produce about 31.8 billion gallons of ethanol. According to the Energy Information Agency, the U.S. consumed about 139.9 billion gallons of gasoline in 2004 (a barrel is 42 gallons). Doing some more math (31.8 billion divided by 139.9 billion), we can see that we would have just enough ethanol to replace just under 23% of the amount of gasoline consumed by the U.S. That assumes, however, that every bushel of corn is used to produce ethanol....

Weak Energy Week

This has been “Energy Week” for President Bush as he barnstormed around the country in follow-up to his State of the Union message that we need to break our so-called “addiction” to oil. But the habit that really needs breaking is his apparent addiction to the notion that government, rather than free markets, will solve our energy problems. The president proclaimed in the State of the Union that, “We will also fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years.” He echoed that theme in Milwaukee this week stating, “We must diversify away from oil for national and economic security. The more ethanol we use, the less crude oil we consume.” Touting ethanol is certainly good politics—particularly in Midwestern corn-growing states that already welcome significant taxpayer subsidies and regulatory mandates for ethanol. But ethanol isn’t necessarily good economics. Researchers from Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley analyzed energy input-yield ratios and reported last July that producing ethanol from corn requires 29 percent more energy than can be derived from the resulting fuel—the switch grass and wood chips ratios are worse (45 percent and 57 percent, respectively). It’s no wonder that subsidies and mandates are the lifeblood of the ethanol industry. It would be terrific if President Bush’s goal of making ethanol “competitive” in six years could be achieved, but that’s unlikely....

Deer, trout, and children

How many of us have complained about the way that our state fish and wildlife agency has been managing (or not managing) our fish and wildlife? Our fees go up and up, and the bag and creel limits shrink. Fish and game habitat produces less and less sporting species in the countryside, while urban (and generally unavailable) deer herds run rampant. Elected officials and state bureaucrats are less and less in evidence, as hunting, trapping, and fishing are attacked by groups committed to their extinction. The negative effects of reduced logging on public lands, and disappearing wildlife management techniques, like predator management and single game species management planning, go unmentioned and unexplained. Introductions of harmful species by federal bureaucracies go unchallenged, and are often covertly abetted by state bureaucrats and "too-busy-to-pay-attention" state elected officials. All the while, we watch our state fish and wildlife agency assembling all manner of information on non-game species for a federal agency to obtain federal funds from Congress to share with the state agency ("strings" anyone?). We watch agency employees working on endangered species, invasive species, and native ecosystems, utilizing hunting and fishing funds, with total disregard for state resident desires, private property, and access to and use of public lands in the state....

Uncle Sam: Louisiana's Next Real Estate Baron?

Given the furor over the federal government's response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, you'd think that any plan to give the feds ultimate control over the rebuilding effort would be laughed off the table. Unfortunately, Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) is pushing just that — a federal land grab of massive proportions that would jeopardize Louisiana's economic recovery. A Baker-sponsored bill, H.R. 4100, would create a new federal agency — the Louisiana Recovery Corporation (LRC) — that would purchase up to 200,000 homes and commercial properties throughout the state that were damaged or destroyed by the 2004 hurricanes. The acquisitions would be funded by the issuance of $30 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds. The LRC would compensate owners at 60 percent of their home or business's pre-hurricane value, and banks would receive 60 percent of each property's remaining mortgage. The LRC would then make infrastructure improvements to prepare these properties for redevelopment and auction them off to private developers for rebuilding and resale, with previous owners having right of first refusal. Baker's proposal is backed by the entire Louisiana legislative delegation and has a great deal of popular support. But, there are several glaring downsides to the plan. First, history is littered with examples of the government's poor track record in large-scale property development....