I need a good idea for an environmental problem for a presentation. Preferably an important one that is commonly ignored.
How about the public trust doctrine?
http://www.perc.org/articles/article877.php
Either way PERC is a good place to start your research. Good luck.
How involved do you want your presentation to be? Is this a research project or a brief speech? And in what subject area is the presentation?
Eliot, you might address any “tragedy of the commons” issue, where a resource is unowned, owned by the “public” or privately owned but where transaction costs make it difficult to identify others who use or pollute the property. In these cases, users have little incentive to invest in protecting the resource for the future (as others can’t be excluded from sharing any gains), and consumers do not face all true economic costs.
Resources are here:
https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/pages/environmental-markets-links-to-austrians.aspx
https://forum.freecapitalists.org/blogs/tokyotom/pages/environmental-law-resources.aspx
and at the various sites linked to under “Environmental Economics” heading on each page. As others have recommeded, PERC is a good link for ideas; FREE is another.
I would like to see more work and development of how a proper understanding and enforcement of property rights is all that is needed to deal with air pollution. In other words, the Clean Air Act is unnecessary. Rothbard wrote a short book (long article?) on this topic, but I have not seen much else.
Lyle, Rothbard’s account does not demonstrate that the Clean Air Act (or something like it) is unnecessary. Rothbard’s argument is that the standard of proof demanded by a proper system of ethics would prohibit a policy like the clean air act on procedural grounds. He does not say that enforcement of private property rights would produce the same outcomes as a coercive blanket policy, because if he did, he’d be wrong. The Clean Air Act represents a departure from Rothbardian ethics (which, I should point out, is not a widely accepted view to begin with), not a blatant disregard for the potential of the free market to internalize externalities generated by air pollution.
Donny with an A, your comments suport my suggestion that this is a good area for a presentation. In terms of Austran Economics, little work has been done in this area. I do think Rothbard’s book/article does demonstrate that the CAA or something like it is unnecessary. I do agree, however, that Rothbard did not say that that enforcement of property rights would produce the same results as enforcement of the CAA or something similar. I think it would produce a better result. What Rothbard or others may think is what I am asking be developed. (Whether Rothbard’s ethics are widely accepted or not is irrelevant to this discussion. It seems to me that the purpose of those who support the free market and Austrian Economics is to work to increase acceptance of these ethical systems.)
The thesis that needs more development by free market/Austrian scholars is that enforcment of property rights or adherence to Rothbard’s system of ethics regarding private property is all that is needed to deal with air pollution. Using a market approach would let those most affected by the air pollution allocate the burden of pollution and determine the compensation for the burden or cost to reduce the pollution.
As to the CAA itself, whether the CAA is a departure from the free market and its ability to internalize externalities generated by air pollution depends on which part of the CAA is under consideration. One of the programs under the CAA is emmsision credits and the buying and selling of these credits. This program is not available to all industries nor does it apply to all types of pollutants. It is a relatively small part of the CAA. This part of the CAA is hardly enough to deem the CAA to be market friendly. Additionally, some parts allow for a cost-benefit analysis, but again this does not redeem the CAA or make it market friendly.
Most of the CAA regulations, found in thousands of pages of the Code of Federal Regulations, impose regulatory standards based on “science” (the reliability of the science is often debateable). The MACT standards, NSPS, and NSR/PSD regulations are not market based, but based on politcally charged science. These standards are usually issued for particular industries and often vary across industries. Yet, the regulations for a particular industry do not often consider the location of a facility in determining standards. Thus, a facility is a rural, sparcely populated area may be required to meet the same standards as a facility in the same industry in a highly populated area. This is a gross departure from a free market system allocation of the burdens of polution.
The provisions in the CAA that allow for “private attorneys general” to enforce provisions of the CAA allow public interest groups (PIGs)/non-governmental organization (NGO) (which accronym you pick depends on your point of view) to hold faclities hostage regardless of how tenuous the PIGs’ claims to injury may be. Often whether a facility gets it permit approved depends on its willingness to pay attorney’s fees to the PIG that is challenging the issuance of the permit. This is a departure from a free market system that would compensate actual injuries.
I could go on about the CAA and its departures from a free market, but that was and is not my point in suggesting to eliotn that this is ripe topic for a presentation. I would simply like to see free market/Austrian scholars further develop the topic of dealing with air pollution. Dealing with air pollution is more difficult than soil or water pollution.
If you want to tackle air pollution without doing an enormous amount of research, but with a focus on libertarian analyses, I’d recommend the following:
Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” in Science
Murray N. Rothbard’s “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution” in Cato Journal
Martin Anderson’s “George Bush, Environmentalist” in the Christian Science Monitor (1/4/89)
Roy E. Cordato’s “Market-Based Environmentalism and the Free Market: They’re Not the Same” in The Independent Review
Peter J. Hill’s “Market-Based Environmentalism and the Free Market: Substitutes or Complements?” in The Independent Review (a response to Cordato)
Mark Pennington’s “Liberty, Markets, and Environmental Values: A Hayekian Defense of Free-Market Environmentalism” in The Independent Review
David Roodman’s “Another Take on Free Market Environmentalism: A Friendly Critique” (a speech)
If you read all of those, you’ll be able to at least give a pretty decent account of how libertarians have tried to approach these issues, and where some of the difficulties in those analyses lie. If you want to go deeper, I can recommend some other resources as well.