In Search of a "New Environmentalism"

A series of essays at Law & Liberty

This month's Law & Liberty Forum features a series of essays explaining the need for a "New Environmentalism" and what such an environmentalism might look like. Steven Hayward has the lead essay. I authored a response, as did Richard Morrison and Allan Carlson. Hayward will have a reply next week.

Hayward's essay begins outlining the need for change:

Is it possible that we have reached a turning point for environmentalism? Perhaps we have already reached it, but don't fully recognize it yet?

Let's start with a basic axiom: the environment is too important to be left to environmentalists. Ever since the first Earth Day in 1970, which can be said to mark the birth of the modern environmental movement, environmentalism has been wedded to a narrow and often fanatical policy architecture that can accurately be described as demanding billion-dollar solutions to million-dollar problems, almost always choosing strategies that maximize political and legal conflict. The result is a kludgy regulatory regime and ongoing political gridlock. Sometimes, policy delivers perverse results in the form of worsening some environmental conditions.

He offers a brief explanation of how environmental protection reached this point, and identifies several policy reform ideas.

My contribution, "Liberal Principles for a New Environmentalism," offers my own account of how modern environmental policy went wrong and what environmental protection grounded in classical liberal principles would look like. It begins:

Congress constructed the edifice of federal environmental regulation atop a pile of misconceptions and mistaken assumptions. Once erected, it has withstood meaningful efforts at reform, and atrophied. However much some existing laws helped address twentieth-century environmental problems, they are increasingly obsolete and ill-suited to today's environmental challenges.

Steven Hayward is absolutely correct that "it is long past time for something new," and properly identifies many of the key attributes upon which a "new environmentalism" could be built. The case for greater utilization of property rights and supplementing market incentives for environmental purposes, such as through prizes, is quite strong. Substantial challenges remain, however. The environmental policy establishment shows little sign of altering course, and, at present, right-of-center political leaders show little interest in a serious or substantive approach to environmental policy.

The birth of the modern environmental movement coincided with an explosion of federal environmental legislation. In less than a decade, Congress enacted a raft of statutes seeking to counteract the environmental consequences of industrialization and centralize control of environmental policy in Washington, DC. Yet, as Hayward suggests, the specific contours of the new regulatory regime were premised upon mistaken, and in some contexts quite harmful, assumptions. For many in the nascent political movement, an environmental crisis required a reconsideration of basic liberal ideals, such as the importance of individual liberty and a belief in progress. In reality, it would have been more productive to commit more fully to applying classical liberal principles to ecological concerns—but that was not the road taken.

Like Hayward, I believe this requires recognizing the importance of property rights, particularly for conservation purposes, harnessing markets, and paying due regard to economic incentives. Unlike Hayward, I am not particularly sanguine about what sorts of policy progress is currently possible.

Particularly with the benefit of hindsight, the outlines of an alternative environmental agenda should be visible, one that recognizes property rights as the foundation of effective conservation, embraces the importance of local community input, and encourages technological innovation and market-driven efficiency improvements. Such an alternative is in line with classical liberal principles and would align with constitutional values far more than the sprawling regulatory edifice we currently have in place.

The problem is that few political leaders have been willing to embrace such an alternative vision of environmental progress. As Hayward recounts, the initial wave of environmental lawmaking was a bipartisan enterprise. Over time, Republican lawmakers grew disenchanted with the growth of centralized environmental regulation and the environmentalist movement's near-unending appetite for further government constraints on productive economic activity. Yet few were willing to consider, let alone embrace, an alternative policy vision.

My essay concludes:

Despite the tremendous environmental progress of the past century, serious environmental challenges remain. Meeting such challenges in an effective and efficient way, without sacrificing other societal needs, will require turning away from the environmental paradigms of the past and embracing the sort of new environmental vision Hayward recommends. The real question is whether there are any political leaders willing to embrace such an environmental agenda and push for reform. Looking at Washington, DC these days, the forecast is cloudy.

Grok