What environmental regulations cause more harm to the environment than good? I am guessing their are tons of regulations, international, federal, state, or even local, that attempt to protect the environment, but whose policies cause detrimental effects to the environment.
The ones that allow factories to pollute your onto your land. Try emailing Walter Block.
Well essentially it stems from a failure to ‘respect’ property rights.
There are many resources on environmental issues here at Mises.org, try do a google search (far more effective).
That’s probably not advisable. Since he’d likely get sent back here [where the community can help with such answers], which is completely understandable… considering the volume of mail he gets.
One I can think of is the one that prohibits cutting down trees. It leads to forest fires.
Here are two that I have anecdotal evidence of (mind you this is just from word of mouth, and would need further verification):
Paper Mill: A couple of years ago, the federal government was giving tax incentives to use “clean energy” from corn ethanol. However, the paper mill was already using clean energy, in that it used the oils from extracted from the pulp as fuel for the mill. The mill was a tightly integrated closed loop system. The Paper Mill faced the conundrum, should they abandon this current clean energy to go after the tax incentive, which would increase profitability? Keep in mind, the corn ethanol would also need to be shipped, whereas the pulp oil was ready at hand.
Waste Water: Per the Clean Water Act industrial wastewater needs to be cleaned in order to be placed back into the river where the water originally came from. Ironically, the water is cleaner when it goes back into the river as opposed to when the water was taken in. This may sound great, however, the cleaner water changes the pH level of the river, thus killing wildlife that utilize the river as their home.
Just an FYI: Some industries require ultra pure water (contaminants below x ppm) for their production processes (like semi-conductors). In fact, they actually “dirty” the water before reintroducing it to the municipal water supplies since it’s dangerous otherwise. However, your point still stands, the pH levels are still adversely affected.