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"Green New Deal" - needs it's own thread


Muda69

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Guess what: Energy production is getting better and cleaner, and not as a result of the fiat of some central-planning committee.: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/natural-gas-energy-production-cleaner/

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The United States is, at the moment, pumping out natural gas faster than you can make related Taco Bell jokes. The United States is by far the world’s largest natural-gas producer, head and shoulders above No. 2, Russia. The growth in U.S. gas production — not the total output, just the growth alone — since the turn of the century is, as energy journalist Robert Bryce runs the numbers, equal to about twice the annual output of Iran, the world’s No. 3 gas producer.

 

Hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have been around for a long time, but it’s only recently that we’ve become really, really good at it, as a result of which long-neglected deposits of oil and gas written off as too expensive to economically extract have come on line in a big way. This has transformed local economies in places such as Midland, Texas, and the Marcellus shale country, but it also has transformed the U.S. economy in ways that are not widely appreciated.

While the amateur schemers in Washington dream of a “Green New Deal,” the people who actually know what they’re doing have achieved a reduction of nearly a third in carbon-dioxide emissions related to electricity production — and not at great cost and inconvenience but while reducing expenses as cheap, abundant, and relatively clean (there isn’t any such thing as “clean energy,” only relatively clean energy) natural gas displaces coal. That wasn’t the result of the fiat of some central-planning committee with godlike powers over the economy; it was the result of innovation, competition, and market choices. That hard work was done while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was still trying to figure out how to change the margarita mix at Flats Fix.

In fact, U.S. emissions from energy consumption were lower in November 2018 (the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration) than they were 20 years ago (in November 1998) in spite of all the economic growth and population growth we’ve seen since then. Coal emissions are down by more than a third in that period. And those are just the gross numbers. Consider emissions per unit of energy output (or per unit of GDP), and the numbers are even better.

New York and Massachusetts would love to have some of that. But you can’t get a gas hookup in the New York City suburbs. As I wrote earlier, this is a political choice, not a matter of scarcity. New York has gas of its own that could be developed, providing energy, jobs, and tax revenue — but Governor Andrew Cuomo has effectively forbidden it. Likewise, gas could be brought in from Pennsylvania and West Virginia — if Governor Cuomo would allow new pipeline capacity to be added. But he won’t.

Why?

Here’s a little political inside baseball for you. In spite of all of the breathless nonsense from dress-over-the-head second-raters such as Chris Hedges, the Christian Right has never had the kind of influence inside the Republican party attributed to it by its critics. And, if you’ve ever worked inside conservative activism, you know exactly why: They’ll pray for you, but God Himself has a hard time getting any of His biggest fans to write a check. It’s a different story for the Pagan Left. (Too much, you think? Let’s see: apocalyptic narrative, punitive floods inflicted by an angry somebody, reformist social agenda, obsession with other people’s sinful lifestyles, indulgences for the likes of Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, zany fundamentalists who turn up their noses at science in defense of the scriptures — tell me environmentalism isn’t a quasi-religious movement.) The Pagan Left will write a check, a big honking one, a flood of them — consult Tom Steyer. As a consequence, it has a far bigger cultural and political footprint inside the Democratic party than the issues alone would merit.

And it has declared war on energy infrastructure from gas pipelines to power plants to depots receiving coal for export. If your belief is that the production and consumption of energy is an activity that comes with inevitable environmental consequences that have to be mitigated, then natural gas looks like a win: In nine-tenths of political disputes, the most relevant question is: Compared with what? And natural gas looks pretty good compared with the current alternatives: fossil fuels that pollute more, alternative sources that are more expensive and that require backup from conventional sources, etc. Not to say that something better might not come along: There are some guys down in Houston right now operating a natural-gas facility that releases no emissions at all into the atmosphere.

But not everybody sees this as a question of tradeoffs. Some people have an ideological-bordering-on-metaphysical belief that more energy consumption is bad, full stop, and that what the human race really needs is less: less consumption, less production, less energy — and, preferably, fewer people, too. That isn’t really environmentalism, exactly. (Whose environment?) It’s a different kind of creed. If that’s your thing, it’s a free country, but spare me the lectures about how much you “f*****g love science.”

The above-mentioned Robert Bryce, and Mike Somers of the American Petroleum Institute, will be joining me for a discussion of the gas boom at the National Review Institute Ideas Summit this week in Washington. There’s a lot more to the story.

 

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Study Estimates the Green New Deal to Cost $93 Trillion — That's a Conservative Estimate: https://mises.org/wire/study-estimates-green-new-deal-cost-93-trillion-—-thats-conservative-estimate

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Both fans and foes of the so-called Green New Deal (GND) agree that it is a wildly ambitious set of proposals, which—by design—will involve the federal government spending boatloads of money. In fact, the GND is so expensive that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has cited the inflationary doctrine of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to deflect the issue; we don’t need to worry about the cost of the Green New Deal, so the argument goes, because the Federal Reserve can create an unlimited number of dollars.

Even so, more sober-minded policymakers, as well as the general public, should be aware of just how ludicrously expensive the GND really is. A recent analysis by the American Action Forum puts the initial 10-year cost at a staggering $93 trillion. Although the reader might understandably assume that this is an inflated figure designed to discredit the GND, it actually rests on a few conservative assumptions. The figure of $93 trillion is admittedly absurd, but that’s only because the planks of the GND are absurdly expensive. The American Action Forum estimate is entirely fair.

The Major Components of the Green New Deal

The American Action Forum is headed by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who—among other positions—was the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2003 to 2005. One can of course disagree with his team’s analysis, but their approach to “budget scoring” the GND is entirely conventional in DC circles.

For their analysis, the AAF team focused on six major planks of the GND that they considered tractable for quantification. The table below summarized the various cost estimates for each of the six items:

summary-table1-768x397_0.png
Source: American Action Forum

Notice that there are many items listed in the GND documentation that are not included in the table above. This is one reason that I have called their cost estimate conservative.

Another important point is that the absurd $93 trillion figure is not driven by one particular modeling choice. On the contrary, five of the six components studied by the team have a (10-year) cost exceeding $1 trillion. So even if it turns out that, say, the AAF team is totally wrong on the cost of Universal Health Care and Guaranteed Green Housing, then the cost would still exceed $50 trillion for the first decade, because of the other components.

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The Green New Deal contains a wish list of progressive social and economic goals that come with a staggering price tag. A recent estimate from the American Action Forum puts the 10-year cost at an incredible $93 trillion. Yet as we have explained above, this estimate is conservative because it leaves out many practical considerations. It’s difficult to be precise, however, because the plan’s authors have been (deliberately?) vague on the details.

In reality, the Congress will not be so foolish as to attempt an undertaking so ludicrously expensive. Yet even if they implement a Green New Deal “lite,” the package would still add many trillions in government debt, while making energy and transportation more expensive for American households and businesses.

So, using the above chart and averaging out the three goals that have a variable cost, I come up with $507,010 per house hold over 10 years,  or $50,701 dollars a year.  I'm sure all of us have this kind of cash laying around,  especially elderly households.

 

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-ceo-burger/vegetarian-patty-gets-the-burger-king-whopper-test-idUSKCN1RD1WO

To mark the launch on April Fool’s day, the burger giant released a hidden-camera-style promo video showing the serving of plant-based Whoppers instead of meat to customers who marvel that they cannot tell the difference.

 

“We wanted to make sure we had something that lived up to the expectations of the Whopper,” said Burger King’s North America president, Christopher Finazzo. “We’ve done sort of a blind taste test with our franchisees, with people in the office, with my partners on the executive team, and virtually nobody can tell the difference.”

The Impossible Whopper comes at an extra cost - about a dollar more than the beef patty Whopper. But Finazzo said research shows consumers are willing to pay more for the plant-based burger.

Plant-based meat has been gaining popularity as more attention is focused on the environmental hazards of industrial ranching. Finazzo said his research shows customers mainly like it for the health benefits. The Impossible Burger patty has zero cholesterol.

Impossible Foods, based in Redwood City, California, launched its first faux meat patty over two years ago. A genetically modified yeast creates the key ingredient, called heme, which makes the patties appear to bleed and taste like real meat.

OK - This is going too far......Messing with the Whopper........Stop the insanity................

 

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1 hour ago, swordfish said:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-impossible-foods-ceo-burger/vegetarian-patty-gets-the-burger-king-whopper-test-idUSKCN1RD1WO

To mark the launch on April Fool’s day, the burger giant released a hidden-camera-style promo video showing the serving of plant-based Whoppers instead of meat to customers who marvel that they cannot tell the difference.

 

“We wanted to make sure we had something that lived up to the expectations of the Whopper,” said Burger King’s North America president, Christopher Finazzo. “We’ve done sort of a blind taste test with our franchisees, with people in the office, with my partners on the executive team, and virtually nobody can tell the difference.”

The Impossible Whopper comes at an extra cost - about a dollar more than the beef patty Whopper. But Finazzo said research shows consumers are willing to pay more for the plant-based burger.

Plant-based meat has been gaining popularity as more attention is focused on the environmental hazards of industrial ranching. Finazzo said his research shows customers mainly like it for the health benefits. The Impossible Burger patty has zero cholesterol.

Impossible Foods, based in Redwood City, California, launched its first faux meat patty over two years ago. A genetically modified yeast creates the key ingredient, called heme, which makes the patties appear to bleed and taste like real meat.

OK - This is going too far......Messing with the Whopper........Stop the insanity................

 

I understand the concern, but they aren't replacing the Whopper, just giving another option.  They already had a veggie burger on the menu for a long while now, so it's not surprising that they'd also move to a Whopper version since it's the most popular item.

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6 minutes ago, foxbat said:

I understand the concern, but they aren't replacing the Whopper, just giving another option.  They already had a veggie burger on the menu for a long while now, so it's not surprising that they'd also move to a Whopper version since it's the most popular item.

Jeez man......It's the WHOPPER!! - Let it be.....

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41 minutes ago, swordfish said:

Jeez man......It's the WHOPPER!! - Let it be.....

Another (sometimes rare) instance of SF and me being completely aligned in our views. Call it something else, man. The Whopper is sacred!

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47 minutes ago, Wabash82 said:

Another (sometimes rare) instance of SF and me being completely aligned in our views. Call it something else, man. The Whopper is sacred!

That - and the Big Mac......Although the bacon add-on is a little tempting......

Burger-Bros.....

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14 minutes ago, swordfish said:

That - and the Big Mac......Although the bacon add-on is a little tempting......

Burger-Bros.....

Do it!  It's amazing when the bacon's done right, but it tends to be inconsistent in the texture ... when it's crispy it is very good.

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On 4/1/2019 at 10:06 AM, Wabash82 said:

Another (sometimes rare) instance of SF and me being completely aligned in our views. Call it something else, man. The Whopper is sacred!

 

On 4/1/2019 at 10:55 AM, swordfish said:

That - and the Big Mac......Although the bacon add-on is a little tempting......

Burger-Bros.....

Of all the hamburgers on Earth, you are defending the two trashiest? 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Renewable energy supporter lose, NIMBY's win in southern Tippecanoe County:  https://www.jconline.com/story/news/2019/04/17/over-objections-wind-farm-ban-recommended-tippecanoe-county/3504763002/

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Wind farms in Tippecanoe County took a blow Wednesday, as planners from across Greater Lafayette recommended an ordinance that would effectively ban commercial turbines.

The vote came after a half-dozen people derided the idea, saying that banning wind farms would make Tippecanoe County appear backward at a time when energy sustainability is vital.

The argument in return, including from nearly two dozen residents of southern Tippecanoe County – thought to be a prime spot for potential wind farms – was that turbines belonged in counties that weren’t growing the way this county is.

The ordinance would prohibit wind turbines taller 140 feet. That would leave the possibility for smaller turbines, similar to ones that power CityBus offices along Canal Road north of downtown Lafayette. But it would shut out commercial turbines, which can range from 300 feet to as much as 600 feet, for newer models.

....

Hmm.  so within the next 20 years Tippecanoe county will be nothing but a large urban and industrial  sprawl?  The county ranks 11th of out 92 in total square miles.   Also wonder what county ordinances are currently in place regarding the rezoning of current agricultural land  to residential or industrial?  I know in Clinton county it is pretty restrictive,  with actual land owners in certain situations not being able to give land to a child in order for them build a house.

 

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The Green New Deal Will Hit the Poor With Higher Energy Costs: https://reason.com/2019/04/24/the-green-new-deal-will-hit-the-poor-with-higher-energy-costs/

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The Green New Deal's goal is to move America to zero carbon emissions in 10 years.

"That's a goal you could only imagine possible if you have no idea how energy is produced," James Meigs, former editor of Popular Mechanics magazine, says in my latest video.

"Renewable is so inconsistent," he adds. "You can't just put in wind turbines and solar panels. You have to build all this infrastructure to connect them with energy consumers."

Because wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, "renewable" energy requires many more transmission lines, and bigger batteries.

Unfortunately, says Meigs: "You have to mine materials for batteries. Those mines are environmentally hazardous. Disposing of batteries is hazardous."

"Batteries are a lousy way to store energy," adds physicist Mark Mills, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Also, the ingredients of green energy, like battery packs, are far from green.

"You have to consume 100 barrels of oil in China to make that battery pack," he explains. "Dig up 1,000 pounds of stuff to process it. Digging is done with oil, by big machines, so we're consuming energy to 'save' energy—not a good path to go."

Still, wind turbines and solar batteries are 10 times more efficient than when they were first introduced! That's not good enough, writes Mills, to make "the new energy economy" anything more than "magical thinking."

"They hit physics limits. In comic books, Tony Stark has a magic power source, but physics makes it impossible to make solar 10 times better again."

The dream of "green" causes us to misdirect resources. Even after billions in government subsidies, solar still makes up less than 1 percent of America's energy—wind just 2 percent. And even that energy isn't really "clean."

"We use billions of tons of hydrocarbons to make the windmills that are already in the world, and we've only just begun to make them at the level people claim they would like them to be built," says Mills. "Pursue a path of wind, solar and batteries, we increase how much we dig up and move by a thousand-fold."

"You gotta clear-cut the forest. These machines kill a lot of birds," says Meigs. "I agree that we should bring down our carbon emissions…but we should also make sure we're spending money on stuff that really works."

There is one energy source, though, that efficiently produces lots of power with no carbon emissions: nuclear.

But people fear it. They point to the Chernobyl plant accident in Ukraine, and Fukushima in Japan.

"The Chernobyl plant design was idiotically bad," says Meigs. They don't make nuclear plants like that anymore.

What about Fukushima?

"Fukushima helps prove how safe nuclear power really is. No one was killed."

I pointed out that people were killed during the evacuation.

"Fear of radiation killed people," responded Meigs. They evacuated older people who didn't need to go.

People fear what they don't understand and what they can't see.

"A dam breaks, and hundreds of thousands of people die. Nuclear plants, their safety, ironically, is actually evident in their accidents!" says Mills.

"More people have fallen off of roofs installing solar panels than have been killed in the entire history of nuclear power in the U.S.," adds Meigs.

Yet after Fukushima, Germany shut down its nuclear plants. That led to higher electricity prices and increased carbon emissions because Germany burned coal to make up for the loss of nuclear power.

Likewise, "in Bernie Sanders' home state of Vermont, they shut down their nuclear plant. Guess what happened? Carbon emissions went up," recounts Meigs. "This supposedly green state, ultra-liberal Vermont, went backwards."

If a Green New Deal is ever implemented, says Mills, it would rob the poor by raising energy costs, while "giving money to wealthy people in the form of subsidies to buy $100,000 cars, to put expensive solar arrays on their roofs or to be investors in wind farms."

"It's upside-down Robin Hood," he adds. "That's a bad deal."

Yet a majority of Americans—including Republicans surveyed—say they support some version of it.

 

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12 minutes ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

Good to see David Koch is so concerned about the poor.

Keep in mind that to several on this Forum it's important that the world we leave for our children and grandchildren insures that they have money as they roam a desolate barren landscape searching for food, water and breatheable air.

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Also keep in mind that to several on this Forum it's important that government dictate, mandate, control, and manage practically every aspect of the United States economy. That they naively believe such loss of individual and economic freedoms will prevent a future of desolate barren landscapes and individuals searching for food, water, and breathable air.

 

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https://thefederalist.com/2019/02/22/capitalism-better-environment-green-new-deal/

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From renovating every building in the United States to ending monopolies to providing every American with affordable food and housing, the Green New Deal outlines an expansive, impractical, and costly plan to combat climate change in the United States. The outdoor clothing company Patagonia demonstrated a more feasible alternative to the Green New Deal last November when CEO Rose Marcario announced the company would donate their $10 million savings from the 2017 tax cuts to environmental causes.

Marcario made it seem as if she was “sticking it to Trump” with the donation, saying the tax cuts ignored the environment and were therefore unethical. She and others view tax cuts as an evil way for the rich at the top of the food chain to become richer, when in reality tax cuts give corporations financial freedom to do good for themselves, their employers, and even the environment.

After the 2017 tax cuts, corporations across the country gave $8.1 billion to their employees in the form of wages, bonuses, and benefits. Companies also donated $1.4 billion to philanthropic causes.

The Green New Deal claims to outline how to get an equal, fair, and green society — a socialist utopia. Besides supposedly eliminating the United States’ carbon footprint, it includes measures it asserts will provide “millions of good, high-wage jobs” and health care for all. Taxpayers — including corporations — would foot the bill for these government programs.

But if history provides any example, socialist policies create poor incentives and never reach the desired goals. Abolishing prices and the profits and losses system causes resources to be misused and misallocated, resulting in underproduction. Indeed, the underproduction of food in socialist states like the USSR and China killed more than 100 million peoplein the last century alone.

Socialists and free market advocates share the same end goals: job creation, productivity, freedom, and equality. It is the means to these ends that differ, and vastly so. The free market has a much better track record of making societies freer, better, and wealthier.

The success of western countries attests to this, with lower infant mortality rates, more access to education and medicine, and a higher standard of living. Socialist states, on the other hand, are more likely to fall into famine and are poorer. Think of Venezuela.

Many businesses already do their part to help the environment. The Proctor and Gamble corporation donates Dawn dish soap to care for animals affected by oil spills. Google created energy-efficient data centers, which use 50 percent less energy than the average data center does. Since 2004, Starbucks Coffee began trying to address climate change by helping their coffee bean farmers reduce their farms’ carbon footprint.

Customers with a heart for the environment are willing to pay an extra dollar for a product when they know the producer will allocate resources to environmentally friendly practices. With each purchase, the customer tells the producer to continue their eco-friendly practices. This is the market system: signaling through prices and profits. And it works without government coercion.

Not only are green business practices and private donations a more practical means of doing good, but they are less costly to taxpayers. Further, these good deeds are committed freely — not by force. And in the long run, freedom always works better than force.

Allow entrepreneurs and corporations like Patagonia the freedom to do as they will with their money, and they can do great things not only for their businesses, but also for the country and the planet.

 

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Want to Protect the Environment? Embrace Capitalism: https://www.cfact.org/2017/11/02/want-to-protect-the-environment-embrace-capitalism/

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At the People’s Climate March in April of this year, one young woman held a particularly interesting, and unfortunately terribly inaccurate sign. It said: “List of things capitalism killed: F&*#%*@ everything.”

What this individual, and much of America and the world, fail to realize, is that capitalism’s benefits far outweigh its faults. Not only has capitalism lifted more people out of poverty than any system ever implemented in the history of civilization, but in so doing, it has done more to protect the environment than any socialist or communist initiative. If you want to protect the environment, you should love capitalism.

Capitalism increases living standards. When living standards increase, people care more about the environment, and are more able to do something to protect it.

According to the World Bank, world poverty rates have been declining in every region of the world over the last several decades.

he Economist and the American Enterprise Institute say the primary reason for this is free markets, which involves the opening up of trade between nations. This is a cornerstone of capitalism. As countries find more markets to sell their goods and services to, jobs, and the elimination of poverty, follows.

This is important, because as a nation creates more wealth, more individuals will inevitably want to give back to society. We would not have the national parks in America without wealthy individuals voluntarily giving away their wealth because they wanted to benefit society.

Look at what John D. Rockefeller, Jr. did, according to the National Park Service:

“The contributions of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his son Laurance S. Rockefeller to expand the national park system are especially remarkable. They gave more than $3 million for land and park roads at Acadia, more than $2 million to enlarge and improve Grand Teton National Park, more than $5 million for land to establish Great Smoky Mountains National Park, more than $2 million for the land comprising Virgin Islands National Park, more than $1.6 million to expand Yosemite, and lesser amounts for lands at Big Bend, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Haleakala, Lassen Volcanic, Olympic, Rocky Mountain, and Shenandoah national parks; Antietam, Big Hole, and Fort Donelson national battlefields; Capulin Volcano and George Washington Birthplace national monuments; Colonial National Historical Park; Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site; and the Blue Ridge Parkway.”

Many contributions from wealthy individuals happened before Congress had even created the National Park Service in 1916. The museums at Mesa Verde National Park, Yosemite, and Yavapai Observation StationöMuseum at Grand Canyon National Park all are in existence because of private philanthropy, and those are only a few examples.

Not only does more wealth provide greater opportunities for protecting the environment, but it also creates greater demand for it. According to Donald Boudreaux’s book Globalization, “Environmental quality is very much like leisure time: as people become wealthier they demand more of it, mostly because they can better afford it.”

John Tamny, contributor at Forbes, explains this concept well: “In the 1930s the number of trips Americans took to U.S. national parks and forests were negligible. By 1950 total visits were under 200 million. Today parks and forests average 1.4 billion visitors annually. Today’s citizens have the time to watch the trees grow and smell the roses.”

While of course there is poverty in the United States that we should all work towards reducing, over time, the overall quality of life of Americans has drastically improved. This means Americans need to spend less time doing tasks by hand that they can now afford to hire a business to do, or can now use technology to accomplish. Their minds are less focused on daily survival, and more on broader issues. This is a positive thing for protecting the environment. When you aren’t concerned about where or how to eat and get clean water or shelter, you care more about whether air is of good quality or if the nearby lake is protected from pollution.

But the evidence showing that capitalism helps improve environmental quality is not just clear from history, it is shines as clear as day in statistical data as well.

Yale University has a metric called the Environmental Performance Index, which takes statistics on environmental health and ecosystem vitality to rate a country’s environmental protection. James Roberts and Ryan Olson of the Heritage Foundation took this number and compared it to the Index of Economic Freedom, which measures how economically free through capitalism a nation is.

They found a strong trend in the data that “indicates that as countries move from economic repression to economic freedom, their environments improve as well.”

Olson and Roberts then looked at the state of private property rights in several countries, and compared that to Yale’s Environmental Performance Index. They found an incredibly strong correlation in this data, suggesting that as private property rights increase, so does environmental protection and quality.

The two researchers explain: “Because land values usually increase over time, owners have an incentive to maintain the quality of the land and its improvements in order to preserve its value. Owners of private property have no interest in destroying the value of the land or its environmental qualities, because they would not profit from such degradation.”

In the 1990’s, Iceland actually began to experiment with property rights when it comes to fisheries. It was long thought that using private property rights on fish or areas of the ocean, since there is no way to stop fish from swimming to other parts, was impossible. But Iceland began using “Individual Transferable Quotas” which allowed fishermen to “harvest specific portions of the overall quota of marine fish.” If a fisherman was having less success meeting their part of the quota, they could sell their rights to other more efficient fishermen, thus creating an incentive to reward more efficient, successful fishermen. This helped limit over-fishing, and over time fish stocks improved, thus increasing environmental quality.

But what about the track record of communist countries? How do they do at protecting the environment?

Countries in the European Soviet bloc, as well as the USSR and Venezuela, do not just fare  worse than capitalist countries at protecting the environment; they do such an awful job at protecting the environment that it inevitably becomes a humanitarian crisis.

According to a report from the Multinational Monitor in 1990, air pollution was a serious problem for the Soviet Union. 40% of citizens lived in areas where contaminants were three or four times the maximum safety levels. In addition, water quality was abysmal. “In Leningrad, nearly half of the children have intestinal disorders caused by drinking contaminated water from what was once Europe’s most pristine supply.”

44% of East German forests were heavily affected by acid rain that came from coal facilities that lacked the equipment necessary to scrub sulfur from emissions. East Germany had air pollution that was deemed to be as many as 12 times worse than that in capitalist West Germany.

Venezuela is in a deep crisis on almost every social level. Food and basic necessities such as toilet paper are becoming almost non-existent. Strong socialist policies have caused deep shortages. While the government was focused on depriving individuals of private property and growing its control over the economy, it ignored the issue of water supply.

As the financial crisis deepens and the recent drought continues, much of Venezuela is becoming ill with diarrhea, other stomach diseases, and skin conditions such as scabies, and folliculitis. Hospitals and households alike see limited water supply, and when there is water, it often comes out of faucets yellow or brown.

As a nation becomes wealthier through capitalism, it starts paying attention to environmental issues, because they no longer have to worry as much about simply surviving. If only Venezuela’s government had focused on growing economic freedom, perhaps then enough could have been done to prevent the water quality crisis happening today.

Whether you are a head of state or just a concerned citizen that wants to protect the environment, you should embrace economic freedom, free markets, capitalism, and private property rights. Your citizens will be lifted out of poverty, your air and water will become cleaner, and your people and neighbors will want to protect the environmental treasures your country offers because they don’t have to worry about what they are going to eat and drink that night.

History, statistical data, and countless real-life examples all agree: to protect the environment, embrace capitalism.

 

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