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                         THE POLLUTION SOLUTION
                           by Dr. Mary Ruwart

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We all want a safe, pollution-free environment -- and with hope in our
hearts many of us have turned to government rules and regulations to
protect ourselves and our loved ones from the horrors of a ravaged
world. Yet pollution of our air and water still threatens. In South
America the rainforests are cleared so rapidly that some of us may live
to see them vanish from the earth. In Africa, big game animals are
hunted to extinction. Where has our environmental strategy failed? What
can we do to make things right again?


THE GREATEST THREAT OF ALL
TOXIC WASTE: Ironically, the greatest toxic polluter of our nation's
environment is the very government we've turned to for protection. The
greatest polluter is the U.S. military. Pentagon spokesperson Kevin
Doxey told the National Academy of Sciences in 1991 that, "We have found
some 17,400 contaminated sites at 1,850 installations, not including
formerly used sites."   The "contamination" consists of toxic solvents
used to de-ice military planes, byproducts of the manufacture of nerve
gas and mustard gas, and radioactive debris. In 1988, the Department of
Energy estimated that it would take 50 years and $100 billion to clean
up a mere 17 of these sites. How can we expect the greatest polluter of
all time to effectively halt pollution by business and industry?

RADIOACTIVE WASTE: Even when the courts recognize that our government is
guilty of killing people with pollution, victims have had no recourse.
In 1984, a Utah court ruled that 10 out of 24 cases of cancer brought to
its attention were due to negligence of the U.S. military in association
with nuclear weapons testing. The Court of Appeals ruled that even
though the U.S. government was responsible, it would not have to
compensate its victims. The government enjoys "sovereign immunity" -- it
does not have t o right its wrongs. How can a "polluter pays" policy
work if the greatest polluter of all cannot be held liable?

NUCLEAR POWER ACCIDENTS: Liability is the key to protecting the
environment. When those who pollute our air, land, and water are held
accountable for the damage they do, would-be polluters are likely to be
far more cautious. For example, in the late 1950s, private insurance
companies refused to insure nuclear power plants, because the enormous
risks associated with a possible accident were unacceptably high.
Consequently, power companies refused to consider nuclear power.
Congress, however, passed a law (the Price Anderson Act) to limit the
amount victims of a nuclear power plant disaster could claim to a
maximum of $560 million. Of this amount, over 80% would come from taxes.
Once the power companies were able to enjoy limited liability for any
damage they might cause, nuclear power plants proliferated. Instead of
protecting the public, our government passed laws to protect
special-interest profits.

RAINFORESTS: Unfortunately, the above story is not an isolated incident.
Governments of all countries have shown a strong tendency to sell out
their nation's environmental bounty to special interest groups. Third
World dictators have routinely driven natives from their rainforest
homes so that those favored by the regime could clear the mighty
forests. The cost of such callousness was vividly portrayed in the movie
MEDICINE MAN, in which Sean Connery played a scientist who found a cure
for cancer in the rainforest. He watched helplessly as the natives who
befriended him were driven from their forest home. The rainforest, along
with the cancer cure, were both destroyed. The U.S. government
frequently directs ``foreign aid'' to Third World power-brokers to pay
for rainforest devastation. U.S. taxpayer dollars are literally fuelling
the fire of the slash-and-burn attacks on the tropical woodlands.

IT'S ONLY NATURAL: Betrayals such as those described above hardly seem
possible at first, but further reflection illustrates that they are only
the natural outcome of political management. Special interests reap
great profits from building nuclear power plants while facing little
liability, dumping toxic waste without having to clean it up, using
radioactive materials without being responsible for the consequences, or
harvesting forests for which they didn't have to pay. When they offer
government officials part of this profit to betray the public interest,
the temptation is often too overwhelming to resist. If an elected
official refuses to be bought, special interests simply fund his or her
opponent in the next election. Few honest politicians can survive
against such odds. Consequently, the special interests win virtually
every time. Indeed, it's a wonder that our environment has not been
totally devastated long before now!


THE EASY WAY OUT
The answer to environmental protection may be gleaned by observing
special interest behavior. Let's take the example of the paper companies
who log America's national forests. The U.S. Forest Service, with our
tax dollars, builds three to four times as many logging roads as hiking
trails, so that vast sweeps of our precious forests can be felled by
paper companies with little cost and only token replanting.

However, on lands which they own privately, the paper companies suddenly
become staunch environmentalists! They replant so that their own forest
acreage increases each year -- while the national ones dwindle. In the
South, International Paper makes as much as 30% of its profits from
recreational uses of its forests.

Why is there so much difference between how paper companies treat their
own land and the way they treat public property? When a paper company is
allowed to log a national forest, it has little incentive to harvest in
a responsible and sustainable manner. After all, the paper company has
no guarantees that it will be allowed access to the same forest again.
Without ownership, long-term planning and care of forests just doesn't
make economic sense.

Owners, on the other hand, profit from long-range planning because they
will eventually reap the fruits of their conservation efforts. Even if
they don't wish to keep a property, selling it becomes more profitable
when it is well cared for, and this includes forest property.

With this in mind, we can propose a two-part strategy for environmental
protection which can turn each person's greed into a desire to nurture
Mother Nature: 1) individual ownership of the environment and 2)
personal liability for damage caused to the property of others.

OWNING A PIECE OF THE EARTH: The British long ago learned how to stop
pollution of their rivers. Fishing rights in British streams and rivers
are a private good that can be bought and sold. For the last century,
polluters have been routinely dragged into the courts by angry owners
and forced to rectify any damage they may have caused. Every owner on
these rivers has in fact become an environmental protector -- because
each stands to profit from nurturing the environment.

In the Gulf of Mexico, shrimp fishermen once claimed parts of the ocean
as their property in the time-honored practice of homesteading. They
formed a voluntary association to keep the waters productive and to
avoid overfishing -- until the U.S. government took over as caretaker in
the early 1900s.

Just as the U.S. government took over the fisheries, so too have Third
World governments taken over the rainforests and handed them over to
special interests. An important element in protecting the rainforests is
to respect the homesteading rights of the native peoples who have
consistently exhibited a history of sustainable use. Conservation
publications, such as Cultural Survival, recognize that upholding the
property rights of native peoples is absolutely crucial to saving the
rainforests.

Private ownership encourages preservation of endangered species as well.
For example, Zimbabwe respects the homesteading claims of natives to the
elephants on their land. Like other private property, elephants and
their products can be legally sold. As a result, the natives jealously
protect their valuable elephants from poachers. The natives have every
incentive to raise as many elephants as possible so they can sponsor
safaris and sell elephant ivory, hide, and meat. As a result, the
elephant population h as increased from 30,000 to 43,000 over the past
ten years. People will protect the environment when they own it and can
profit from it.

On the other hand, when governments try to shepherd wild animal herds,
disaster is the predictable result. For example, the Kenyan government
claims ownership of all elephants, and hunting has been banned in Kenya.
While Zimbabwe's herds thrived, elephants in Kenya have declined 67%
over the last decade.

Environment that is ``unowned,'' suffers a condition described by Dr.
Garrett Hardin in a 1968 paper as ``the tragedy of the commons.'' He
revealed that property that belongs to "everyone" is the responsibility
of no one. Ocean fish, for example, are considered to belong to anyone
who catches them; consequently, everyone tries to catch as many as they
can today, before a competitor gets them tomorrow. If the ocean could be
homesteaded, as with the shrimp fisheries described above, owners would
have an incen tive to make sure the fish population was maintained and
even expanded.

MAKING POLLUTERS PAY: If someone pollutes or destroys that piece of the
earth owned by another, he or she should be required to restore it. In
practice, this could be so expensive that a polluter could be bankrupted
by his or her own carelessness. If corporate officers were made
personally responsible for deliberate acts of pollution, they would have
little incentive to poison the air, land or water. Making polluters, not
taxpayers, responsible for the damage they do takes the profit out of
pollution.


THE BOTTOM LINE
Privatizing the environment gives owners the incentive to protect it.
Making sure that polluters -- not taxpayers -- compensate their victims
is the best deterrent. We can save the earth by making greed work for,
instead of against us. What could be more natural?


                        RECOMMENDED READING

Healing Our World (Ruwart) ................................... $14.95
Free Market Environmentalism (Anderson) ...................... $14.95
Economics & The Environment (Block Ed.) ...................... $19.95
Freedom In Our Time (Conservation & Capitalism) ..............  $2.95


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