Re: Libertarian Environmental Policy Notes

Thomas E. Crebbs (crebbs@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU)
26 Jan 1998 21:36:04 GMT 

Daniel C. Burton wrote...

>>
However, "the environment" is
really nothing other than the sum of all the property owned by
everyone in the world, and the traditional legal system has always
provided a remedy for harm to property.
<<

Both of these statements are incorrect.
	First, "the environment" is not "the sum of all property owned..."
Nobody, so far as i'm aware, owns the air, the oceans and rivers (most
large ones anyway) the clouds, the ants, nor most other non-stationary
pieces of the environment.  There is a reason for this:
	Property rights are a convention, a man made artifice, very
useful, but artificial and not universally applicable.
	Don't get me wrong here; i have supported market-based solutions to 
environmental problems for as long as i can remember.  The air pollution
market, in which companies get a certain "allowance" of pollution and then
are free to buy and sell these (particular) property rights, is a
brilliant idea.  It must be noted, however, that the particular right
granted (to pollute the air) is a tiny sliver of the rights that one
associates with "ownership" of something and to actually sell the air,
lock, stock and barrel (as they say) is unnecessary and absurd.
	As for the second the part of your statement, the legal system has
Not always provided a remedy for harm to property.  It has usually
provided a remedy for some types of measurable, obvious and easily
understood types of harm to property in the haphazard and unequal fashion
common to "the legal system" (but that's another discussion).
	It has been specifically unable to deal in any kind of consistent, 
ethical or Constitutional manner with any number of the more complex, less
tangible damages to property (often at the hands of the government).
You are suggesting leaving up to them a whole new (many new) area(s) of
contention, which by there very nature would involve the kind of
subtleties and complexities which "the legal system" has proven entirely
unable to deal with. (Note: this invariable leads to government expanding
its own power with little regard for the rights of the citizens).

>>
For example, consider what would happen if your neighbor dumped trash
on your front lawn.  Clearly you would be entitled to some sort of
legal remedy for this.<<

Assuming you know who did it.

>>
The medium by which pollution harms you may be different, but there is
no reason why this damage should be treated any differently.
<<

	Except that it is that much more difficult to know who is to be held
responsible. Which polluter actually caused the specifically noticed harm.
E.g. three companies dumping into a river:  The fish all die.  Perhaps a
good biochemist will be able to tell me which one to hold responsible (if
i can afford to hire him) perhaps not. 
	This also illustrates another important point.  The companies all
have a strong interest in being able to dump their pollution.  I only have
a very slight interest in stopping any single polluter.  It is a standard
case of a vested interest getting utility X while the people foot the cost
Y (larger than X) but spread over so many that there is not a strong will
to stop it.  

...
>>
Private property rights are in fact the mechanism for preventing water
pollution in Great Britain and Canada.  There, rivers and other bodies
of water are owned just as land is.  When someone upstream harms the
quality of the waters downstream, the owners downstream can sue for
damages.
<<

	It seems to me that you are simply asking the courts to do what the 
EPA does.  The courts will be prone to the same errors as the EPA but will
be entirely unable to look out for some out of the way places. 
Furthermore, in densely populated areas (exactly where pollution should be
expected) such as L.A., lawsuits will abound.  Every fifth person will be
involved in a lawsuit because the smell from the refinery/docks/whatever
ruined their dinner one windy night, or because there is some dirty silt
on THEIR beach.	N.B.: They will win too.  The juries will say "oh that big
evil corporation has so much money and that family is so nice and much
like me and hey, let's re-distribute a little wealth."

>> This is because when
resource use decisions are made politically, special interest groups
tend to prevail.  Small, concentrated interests who have much to gain
have much more of an incentive to become involved in the political
process than large, unconcentrated ones who have less at stake
individually.<<

All right, that will teach me not to start blathering before i finish
reading the post.  I apologize for the unnecessary explanation of this
type of thing above.  But, i expect you to see my point then.  It is one
thing if the water is black and murky and i can't go swimming, it is
another if some species of fish is being killed off.  I probably don't
care enough to do anything, but that doesn't mean it should be allowed. 
(This brings up a couple other problems but this post is already too long) 

>>
For example, the National Forest Service builds three times as many
logging roads as public access trails.  It has even been known to
build these roads at a cost above the profit from logging.  It gives
companies short-term contracts to log trees, which gives them little
incentive to worry about long-term conservation of resources.  This
amounts to nothing more than a subsidy for clear-cutting that runs
contrary to the agency's mission of conserving our forests.
<<

This is all correct.  However, It is specific to Real Property.  Property
rights work great for real property (imagine that) and government
intervention WILL invariably do more harm than good.  This does not work so 
well for other parts of the environment which are not so easily "owned."
Obviously there should be no "tragedy of the commons" for things that need
not be communally owned, (our problem is simply how to distribute property
rights - and good luck with that. :) But this is not a solution.  You
still have the "tragedy" for those things not ownable (for lack of a
better word). The solution, btw, is to distribute specific and individual
(property) rights as in the case of the Smog-Market (TM ;).  N.B.  that
requires government oversight, setting of quotas/allowances/whatever, etc.
					
>>
Some government policies even run explicitly counter to protecting the
environment.  In the 1950's insurance companies would not insure
nuclear power plants because of the enormous risk of accidents.
Consequently, power companies refused to consider nuclear power.  At
least, that was until the government came along and fixed everything.
It limited the amount of money nuclear disaster victims could collect
in damages to $560 million, 80% of which would be payed by the
government.  Not surprisingly after this, nuclear power plants, and
with them the risk of nuclear accidents, proliferated.[Ruwart]
<<

hmm. Sure.  The "risk of nuclear accidents proliferated."  Nuclear
accidents didn't actually proliferate, but the risk certainly did.
	Are you seriously arguing AGAINST nuclear power?  Am i really
expected to believe that the growth in the use of nuclear power has been 
"counter to protecting the environment."  You need to go back and study up
a bit on nuclear power.  
 	The insurance companies wouldn't insure a safer and better form of
power because they were stupid, or at best ignorant.  Don't get me wrong,
ignorance is a very good reason not to insure something, less info=more
risk. The point though, is that on this one time the government did
something right. Would you prefer we didn't exploit nuclear power?  Are
you some sort of Luddite??  So the government protected itself a little by
capping the awards at 560 million.  Like private insurance companies don't
have caps (if the insured person doesn't have money and the insurance
policy is only for X amount, the results are the same).  Worse, private
insurance companies can dry up and blow away when time comes for a big
settlement, mining firms can declare bankruptcy.  At least the government
won't just declare bankruptcy. So the (nonexistent, btw) victim gets a mere
560 million, oh darn.   
	Governments have a long history of supporting new industries and
despite my professed libertarianism, i have to tell you all, it's a good
thing.  (well, unless your a Luddite. In which case i can respect that :)
 
---

All right, that little nuclear power thing was a little off topic.
I want to conclude by saying that, despite the contrary nature of this
post (group-think, even libertarian group-think, is never good).
We agree on more than we disagree.  My primary comment is that promoting
litigation to solve the environmental problems is not the answer.
It will require the invention of new institutions and those will,
unfortunately, will require some government involvement.

	You pointed out that Gov't ONLY exists to do those things that we
can not do ourselves as individuals.  Insuring that private companies do
not pass on egregious environmental cost to us in order to obtain a
relatively small benefit (though large to them), falls exactly into that
category.