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In the midst of all the hyperbole surrounding anthropogenic global warming (AGW), I find that I can actually take little solace from the libertarian community when it comes to AGW and the environment in general. In a previous post, http://libertariancomment.com/climate-change-whats-a-libertarian-to-do/ , I advocate for a precautionary stance simply based on the asymmetric nature of the risk, i.e.; if the worst predictions of the AGW crowd are true, humanity itself is threatened. However, what I didn’t do was explore this issue from a principled perspective and, after all, the Libertarian Party is “The Party of Principle” so our principles should be the basis of our positions and policy recommendations. So, I figured I’d give it a shot.
Libertarian philosophy at its core can be described as a radical view of the property rights of human beings. Essentially, we state that one owns oneself and accordingly, there is no justification for an external authority to breach your full ownership of yourself. We make an exception in that the use of force is justified to protect your natural rights when they are breached by another. Owning oneself includes the freedom to do as one pleases with the property one owns. Since human beings create things and labor to do so, the product of those efforts or what is gained through free exchanges of the effort or property with others is yours to keep and no external authority has any right to either. I like to think of it as individual sovereignty, which means that essentially that there is no higher authority than me in society, except in those areas in which I agree to cede that authority for our mutual benefit. Btw, hard core libertarians would argue with that approach and that is why they recommend anarchy. I’m not willing to go that far as I believe we need a state to protect everyone’s natural rights, to defend our nation and that we can agree to act together in other ways collectively to improve all of our lives. For example, I differ from many libertarians in that I think we should have public support for education to guarantee every citizen the ability to understand their natural rights and the world around them before they are actually cast out into the great game of fending for oneself that we heartily believe in. I think, as Thomas Jefferson did, that “information is the currency of democracy”, that freedom stems from reason, and that a person must be trained to reason before he/she can adequately appreciate what being free necessitates. But, in the main, I and most libertarians agree that government interventions into the free market are unnecessary encroachments on our natural rights and, accordingly seek to reorder society into a much freer place with far less government.
This is why many libertarians push back at government regulation of environmental issues. However, there are aspects of our principles that actually would support government intervention and I think the environment is an area where government intervention is not only desirable but in fact implied by our principles. The simplest way to describe it is via ‘The tragedy of the commons’, a theory that lays out how property which is not owned will not be cared for. Essentially, since current depletion affects later users, current depletion of a resource is encouraged because there is no penalty for the immediate user. If the ‘commons’ were privately owned, the owner would ensure that the ‘commons’ were used in sustainable ways so current and future consumers could be satisfied. An example of this is how farmers rotate crops to ensure the long term health of their land versus just depleting it’s capacity as quickly as possible. Many libertarian theorists claim that this argues for the privatization of everything, but I can’t see how that could be applied to the air, water or the effects that the polluting of either have on property that is privately owned. The Libertarian Party mumbles some vagueness about this in its platform and it’s clear to me that this view is insufficient theoretically to deal with the fact that these ‘commons’ of air/water aren’t owned by anyone currently.
Given this analysis, it seems that libertarians should support government intervention to protect the environment, or better said, to manage it. In terms of what policies we should support, clearly policies that rely on the free market to develop effective solutions is what we should be supporting. Certainly, policies that pick the winners and losers by selecting one technology or another should be strongly objected to. For example, the rubric of ‘Green Jobs’ has to be fought tooth and nail, as it simply is a cover for subsidies to favored groups. In fact, these approaches are economically costly and will distract us from creating real solutions. I recently wrote a post about great work being done by Craig Ventner at Synthetic Genomics which may solve the entire problem for us – and it is doing so with no government funding. The free market will drive all the innovation required if there is a need to be met – there is no need for some bureaucrat, or even worse, a sanctimonious do-gooder, to figure it all out for us. As far as actual regulations, it seems the best approach is to regulate emissions as we have with say CFCs (with great success – that’s why you don’t hear much about the ozone layer anymore) or other pollutants. Both a carbon tax or cap and trade schemes seem to have merit and I’m fine with either as long as they impose as little friction as possible on the economy which can be done by making them revenue neutral. This means that any revenue the government receives from these regulatory activities must be offset by givebacks in income taxes for tax payers. Expanding government’s GDP footprint is unnecessary to accomplish our environmental goals, and I think we can do so in a way that is both effective and consistent with libertarian principles.
In closing, I must mention that the support in some libertarian circles for AGW skepticism is very wrongheaded. Any serious inquiry about the science shows that C02 drives warming and that we are producing more C02 which will lead to warming. There is no debate about this from any climate scientist (Lindzen, Michaels or Spencer, for example). There are legitimate questions about the extent and rate of the warming and the likely impacts, which we should try to understand and advocate for a non-politicized evaluation of the correct policies to address the challenge. The AGW fetishists should know that when they gave Hugo Chavez a standing ovation in Copenhagen, they reveal an ugly thing about the politics of the Green movement that does them no favors. Libertarians should avoid being drawn into the highly politicized food fight that AGW deniers and hysterics are having at this time. We should also be sure that we aren’t distracted from other important environmental concerns that all the talk of AGW squeezes out of view. Clean water should be high on our list to, for starters.
The bottom line is that libertarians should hold themselves to a standard of reason and science, as liberty is a gift that arose from both, and not descend into polemical fist fights for their own sake. Leave that to the neo-con-gelicals and the lib-gressives. It doesn’t seem to be working out too well for them, and we should not allow ourselves to be drawn to the side of anti-intellectualism because of our reflexive dislike of government.
The problem with allowing the Government, or Governments, to be the “managers” of the environment is that, at least, our Government constantly makes decisions off bad intelligence. Whether it be the current global climate scandal, WMD’s in Iraq, or that the American people would support a health care bill; time and time again we are being led down a path by the deaf, dumb, and incompetent.
Aside from the ignorance of our leaders in understanding what happens in the ‘real world’, when Government intervention or oversight is introduced political bias tends to rule the direction of policy. Oh, and lets not forget to ask ourselves… if Government is the manager of the environment, how much are we going to pay to manage it? and since Government tends to be one of the most egregious violators of the environment, who is going to manage them?
You completely ignore my reasoning. How do you propose to care for aspects of the environment that are not privately owned? Btw, your case against government doesn’t comport with the facts. Acid rain and CFCs have been successfully reduced by intelligent government environmental policies. Why is it that you don’t hear about problems in the ozone layer anymore? Because of Cap & Trade for CFCs. Of course their are problems and abuses, and many environmentalists have an anti-capitalist agenda.
Read up on ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, I think it will help you see my point – and I’m a very strong libertarian, so I wouldn’t suggest that government be empowered to act lightly.
I really appreciate this article. I’ve been searching for well-thought responses to this issue, as I think complete denial of humans affecting the climate is naive, yet to say humans are the sole cause of the current environmental state of being is just as misguided. And especially since you come out the topic from a libertarian point of view, although as you say it may not be the consensus view point.
I agree that the government should be looked to as a quote-unquote ‘manager’ of the environment. But as someone who finds himself waking up more and more libertarian each day, that’s a hard pill for me to swallow. I think it’s a good thing that Teddy Roosevelt supported conservation in his presidency; perhaps the problem now has more to do with environmental lobbyists than any governmental conservation. But measures should be taken to protect certain lands, waterways, etc. (it’s just unfortunate that so many ecological jewels lie outside of the U.S. jurisdiction).
You make the point in your article that the CO2 drives warming; I do not disagree with that statement. However, whether or not you see it as a mechanism established by God, I believe the earth has a handle on CO2 output through the process of photosynthesis (and similar processes). Yes, humans have increased our output over the last century significantly, but I don’t think that would be as much of a problem if we were still committed to preserving forests. It’s especially unfortunate that the very idea of “going green” through renewable fuel sources could end up causing more harm than good, as illustrated in this Time Magazine article. In Brazil’s attempt to cash in on the renewable energy craze, large portions of the Amazon are being slash and burned in order to produce fertile farmland to grow sugarcane and corn. As I said though, that’s Brazil’s land, and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop them unfortunately.
Not sure if I stayed on topic through that, but if there is a way to ensure government commitment to conservation while remaining revenue neutral, then I would be all for it. As it is, the plans that get put forward regarding cap and trade and the like fly in the face of the American taxpayer. And rather than let markets dictate which energy sources should be pursued (i.e. if we can drill for now, let’s drill, but under the realization that we won’t have it forever) the government would rather hand out subsidies to either renewable or fossil fuels depending upon who is in power. haha I guess now I definitely got a little off topic from AGW.
In closing, the skepticism is just plain wrong; to say humans don’t affect the environment is like saying buying something doesn’t affect my future purchasing power. We just have to be smart in how we live. And to the Al Gores out there, if we’re as doomed as you say, then drastically changing course now won’t save us… so let’s give it a little more thought, mkay?
P.S. glad I found this blog. Can’t remember where I linked from… maybe Reason