Green Libertarianism

Mar 25, 2010 at 6:52 AM

By Elliot Engstrom

Amidst all the craziness that has been the recent healthcare bill, I've found some "fun" in taking a closer look at what is called "green libertarianism" or "free market environmentalism." It's a really cool idea that basically argues that libertarian principles would work as great fixes for many of our environmental problems.

The concept deals with several aspects of the environmental problems that we see today. I'll focus on overexploitation, pollution, clean-up, and overconsumption.

Overexploitation of environmental resources is a direct result of government interfering in the realm of property and ownership. When massive amounts of property are made communal or state-owned (i.e. national/state parks, highways, urban areas, transportation hubs, etc.) there is no ownership incentive to keep an area clean or use its resources efficiently. Instead, everyone who uses the area operates under the "someone else will take care of it mindset." Often times no one takes care of it, and when someone actually does tend to the state-owned property it is, of course, the state -- and we know how well the state manages its affairs. For more on overexploitation, see: "Environmentalism, Free Market," Richard L. Stroup, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: Library of Economics and Liberty.

Pollution occurs primarily when a person who has been harmed by an externality of a transaction is not allowed to seek and receive total restitution for the harm done to them. For example, part of the cost of a semi-truck driving down the highway is the pollutants being pumped out into the atmosphere and dirtying the air. However, as there is no mechanism in the governmental model for those who live near highways to seek restitution for such pollution, the cost is paid by those who breathe the air, and not the trucking companies that release the pollutants. In a market system involving property rights, such a mechanism could easily exist.

For example, anyone living near the highway could bring suit against it for air pollution, and the highway would then charge truck drivers extra based on how much pollution a truck emitted, giving the highway company the money to compensate those breathing the polluted air. This is just one way it could possibly happen, the glory of the market is that no one really knows how such a problem would be solved! In other words, if industries had to internalize the costs of negative externalities like pollution, they would have an incentive to reduce them. For more on pollution and property rights, see: "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution," Murray N. Rothbard, Cato Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring 1982).

Clean-up would naturally occur in a market, because it entails a net gain on property values. If I clean up my land, it is now worth more -- I have an incentive to do so. However, with such a massive amount of communal ownership, no one receives the gains from such cleanup, and thus no one has an incentive to carry out the cleanup in the first place. For more on clean-up, see: "A Hayekian Defense of Free-Market Environmentalism," Mark Pennington, The Independent Review, Volume X, No. 1, Sumer 2005.

Overconsumption (or more accurately put, malconsumption), would not exist in a free market that was absent the distorting taxes and subsidies of the government. For example, a highway is a subsidy to trucking companies, as it allows them to move large amounts of items without having to bear any of the costs of the distribution infrastructure. In a free market, shipping very well might be more expensive, causing more and more local products to be able to compete with competitors based far away. Also, if people began to consume too much of a resource, it would eventually become to expensive to buy, as both its value and its cost would dramatically increase. As prices go up, consumers redirect their purchases to substitute items that entail the use of different, less costly resources, keeping a single resource from being overused. For an example of how overconsumption results from government policies, see: U.S. Farm Bill Causes Health Problems for Citizens, Elliot Engstrom, Rethinking the State, February 2, 2010.

While this is an oversimplified look at our environmental problems, it's a basic sketch of how the market could easily correct problems that are a direct result of government intervention. I'll be looking into this concept more and more as time goes on, keep an eye out for future posts on this.

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I'm not particularly conscious of living greenly myself, though to some extent I tend to do so almost by chance (I drive maybe once a week, want a fuel efficient car to save money, and shop at Goodwill and Whole Foods).

But on the other hand, I also find it ridiculous that some on the right -- while correctly objecting to government regulations for the environment -- deny that we should consider the effects of our actions at all. In some cases, it almost seems as if people believe the "conservative" thing to do is to have actual malevolence for the environment, to revel in throwing away recyclables or driving a gas-hog. This is a complete misapplication of anger and downplays the potential of the free market.

Aaaaanyway, </rant> and good post.

Submitted by Bonnie Kristian on March 25, 2010.

I'm personally very skeptical about "Green-Libertarianism". The political philosophy currently has many contradictions. Many individuals who usually label themselves as "Green-Libertarians" often find themselves more than often seeing eye-to-eye with "Left-Libertarians", whom many of them believe property is theft.

Submitted by Peter Anthony Tariche on March 25, 2010.

And these contradictions would be...

Ever heard of efficiency? Kind of the backbone of capitalism; it's designed to cut production costs to the extreme, so truly capitalist companies would not be wasteful because, quite literally, it would reduce their capital!

There's no contradiction to loving freedom and being green--being green goes hand in hand with being efficient and not wasteful. To that end, the least efficient and therefore least green entity would have to be the state--it's about as wasteful as you can get!

Oh, and I'm no left-libertarian, but they do not beleive property is theft. Private property is a central tenant to any libertarian philosophy, right or left.

You want to break the left/right paradigm?

I'd suggest reaching out to both sides when possible; don't let the left have the monopoly on the green movement; it's by far more popular with teens than abortion issues. Promise.

Submitted by Jared Fuller on March 25, 2010.

I understand your concern, but know that not all left-libertarians see property as theft. It's more a question of how property has traditionally been acquired. I consider myself somewhat of a "left-libertarian", but I still see property as extremely important, so long as it is acquired via non-coercive means.

Submitted by Elliot Engstrom on March 25, 2010.

There is a great report at http://WWW.PERC.ORG (Property and Environmental Research Center), called "The 8 Great Myths of Recycling". Fantastic read, I was amazed at how much is a lie.

Here: www.perc.org/pdf/ps28.pdf

Submitted by Dave (not verified) on March 25, 2010.

When I make my arguments for liberty I make sure to include the fact that roads are overproduced by government resulting in a lot of environmental degredation. You can make the same argument with those who want to be isolationists in terms of trade by telling them that our foreign dependency on oil is caused in large part by government road production.

Submitted by George Edwards on March 25, 2010.

A good article concerning property rights, and free market case law is http://mises.org/daily/2120

Submitted by George Edwards on March 25, 2010.

Elliot I love it. I'm studying Conservation Biology at App State and this makes me so proud. As far as your over-expolitation and pollution sections, I think you would find water rights in the west as really interesting. If you live on land with a water source, you don't actually own it unless you buy "rights" to it. The Colorado River actually dries up before it even reaches the ocean, leaving lots of places, like our good friend Mexico, screwed over. Loved this!

Submitted by Leigh Rimmer (not verified) on March 25, 2010.

How would this approach work for controlling vehicle emissions in general? Would we form class-action suits against manufacturers, entities that do not actually emit pollutants from the vehicles they make (and thus violate none of my property rights). Do we all sue each other for particles that might (or might not) have dirtied my air property? Or do we form one big class-action suit against ourselves?

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Submitted by johnRX (not verified) on May 22, 2011.

The healthcare bill is something that we need to push more in the future. I see so many people wanting to push this for the future.

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Submitted by james king (not verified) on August 14, 2011.

Oh, and I'm no left-libertarian, but they do not beleive property is theft. Private property is a central tenant to any libertarian philosophy, right or left. Verkaufsoffener Sonntag

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