It’s time for some good news about America. By historical standards, the vast majority of Americans are exceedingly well off. This is important because richer is healthier, safer – and more environmentally sensitive. We have greatly improved environmental quality since the first Earth Day. However, the easy problems have been solved. More complex issues of […]
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Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. -Emma Lazarus Environmentalists have long held that environmental problems come down to one issue: population. All of our environmental woes, from species extinction to global warming, can […]
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“Strange bedfellows make interesting children.” This observation from Don Snow, Arts and Literary Director of Gallatin Institute, applies to the recently released “Green Scissors” report. The report originated from a hitherto latent coalition of environmentalists and pro-market advocates. On the one side, we have Rep. Kasich (R-OH), a “Gingrich acolyte.” On the other is Ralph […]
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People agree strong government does much good. Nothing new here. But there is a change. Once it seemed that only the sophisticated, the cynical, and economists allied with the University of Chicago understood government’s potentials for mischief. For a generation, the proportion of analysts writing on the pathologies and pitfalls of government power has grown. […]
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February 22, 1997 marks the centennial of the creation of the national forest system. We can learn a lot from America’s century-long romance with sylvan socialism. This Progressive Era experiment featured centralized planning by green Platonic despots; it has inspired America’s environmental legislation ever since. The Progressive Era reformers, in contrast to America’s Founding Fathers, […]
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The cowboy symbolizes the American West and universal manly virtues. For a few decades these rugged individualists ran roughshod over the wild expanse of the West, herding cattle, taming broncs, and working dawn to dusk. In myth, the cowboy still is the West at its best. But times they are a changing. The West isn’t […]
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Whether we’re trying to save species or specie, decisions are based on information and incentives. Regulations that generate poor incentives simply won’t work. Good intentions are not enough. Congress tried to protect endangered species via the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Prior to 1973, landowners could freely use their land, even if endangered species […]
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“By establishing a nonprofit trust to manage the Presidio’s property, it gives us a blueprint for national parks that one day will be able to sustain themselves without government funds,” President Bill Clinton announced last month. He was in part referring to legislation he signed which turned over management of the Presidio National Park in […]
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In Idaho, state wildlife biologists are doing something they never learned in college—teaching trout how to eat native foods. It seems that the hatchery-raised fish, fed a diet of protein pellets instead of stoneflies, have developed rather discriminating palates. They react to worms and other traditional fare the way most five-year-olds do to broccoli. This […]
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Some day, a politician will offer reforms harmonizing environmental quality with responsible liberty and modest prosperity. This niche in our political ecology is vacant. Incentives to fill it have been weak. This, however, is rapidly changing. Republican representative Sherwood Boehlert of NY said, “There were some valuable lessons learned by some who ignored environmental policy […]
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