Ron Paul and the Environment
Many liberals and progressives agree with Ron Paul's ideas on withdrawing US forces from Iraq and restoring our Constitutional liberties, but wonder what his pro-liberty principles would mean for the environment. Fortunately for liberals (and conservatives) concerned about environmental issues, Ron Paul shares their concern, and understands that freedom and environmental protection can coexist.
In a recent interview on YouTube, Ron Paul explained how pollution could be reduced in a free market, by a strict enforcement of private property rights. Rather than enacting complex federal regulatory schemes, Ron Paul would hold companies and individuals legally liable for any harm they do, to people or their property.
How do big business and big government collude to allow pollution? All too often, a government regulatory board is subject to intense lobbying from the industry it regulates, or works hand-in-hand with "experts" from that industry to write regulations the big companies will agree to. These are generally quite costly to comply with, but existing factories are "grandfathered in," giving them a cost advantage and discouraging new competition from companies that might have built new plants with less polluting newer technology. The process even has a name -- regulatory capture. Companies that comply with the regulations then face reduced legal liability for actual harm their polluting activities may cause.
Environmentalists sometimes see economic progress as the enemy of clean air and water, but studies have shown that the most prosperous nations are also the least polluted. Even in the United States, some of the worst environmental pollution occurs on government land, and one of the biggest polluters listed in the EPA Superfund sites is the federal government itself. Many former military bases on are on the list. Much of the land in the western United States is owned by the federal government, with logging and mining rights leased to private companies. Environmental degradation on that property exceeds that on privately owned land, because private owners want to preserve the long-term value of their property. Companies leasing government land don't share that concern for long-term value.
Ron Paul's return to a more sensible foreign policy of non-intervention would have its own positive impact on the Earth's environment, not the least of which would be bringing an end to the devastation caused by depleted-uranium rounds used by the military in wars that would have best been avoided. Rather than risking the lives of the troops and spending billions in taxpayer dollars to defend the interests of big oil companies, Ron Paul would allow the free market to develop cost-effective alternative energy sources as oil becomes more scarce.
Critics of Ron Paul's free market policies might suspect that corporate executives with little concern for the environment would be his biggest supporters. Yet if that were the case, why are the big corporate donors giving to Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton instead? Ron Paul raises nearly all of his funds from individual donors, a great portion of it in donations of less than two hundred dollars. Big business greatly prefers big government that it can buy out and control to the unpredictable competition the free market.
Ron Paul's free market policies would foster the prosperity and innovation that could dramatically improve environmental quality, while his insistence on private property rights would help limit pollution and environmental damage from big business by holding them legally liable for it. Voters who like Ron Paul's principled stands on foreign policy and Constitutional liberties can rest assured that he would protect the environment as well their individual rights.
Read more at Paul 4 Prez
In a recent interview on YouTube, Ron Paul explained how pollution could be reduced in a free market, by a strict enforcement of private property rights. Rather than enacting complex federal regulatory schemes, Ron Paul would hold companies and individuals legally liable for any harm they do, to people or their property.
When one has a proper respect for property rights, environmental concerns go away. In a society that respects the property of others, it is cause for legal action if someone pollutes your land, or the water coming across your property, or the air which floats above it.... So while a land owner may choose to build a big factory on his land, he must be very careful to ensure that no harm comes to adjacent property owners, or he will face the unmitigated wrath of those neighbors. In the past, big businesses often colluded with government to allow them to pollute their neighbors land, leaving the adjacent owners with devalued property and no recourse.
How do big business and big government collude to allow pollution? All too often, a government regulatory board is subject to intense lobbying from the industry it regulates, or works hand-in-hand with "experts" from that industry to write regulations the big companies will agree to. These are generally quite costly to comply with, but existing factories are "grandfathered in," giving them a cost advantage and discouraging new competition from companies that might have built new plants with less polluting newer technology. The process even has a name -- regulatory capture. Companies that comply with the regulations then face reduced legal liability for actual harm their polluting activities may cause.
Environmentalists sometimes see economic progress as the enemy of clean air and water, but studies have shown that the most prosperous nations are also the least polluted. Even in the United States, some of the worst environmental pollution occurs on government land, and one of the biggest polluters listed in the EPA Superfund sites is the federal government itself. Many former military bases on are on the list. Much of the land in the western United States is owned by the federal government, with logging and mining rights leased to private companies. Environmental degradation on that property exceeds that on privately owned land, because private owners want to preserve the long-term value of their property. Companies leasing government land don't share that concern for long-term value.
Still, some of the most radical environmentalists remain convinced that the only way to protect green space is for government, particularly the federal government, to own more and more land. This is an ironic point of view, because countries that have had the most government regulation of property, such as the former Soviet bloc nations, have had the absolute worst records of environmental quality.
Ron Paul's return to a more sensible foreign policy of non-intervention would have its own positive impact on the Earth's environment, not the least of which would be bringing an end to the devastation caused by depleted-uranium rounds used by the military in wars that would have best been avoided. Rather than risking the lives of the troops and spending billions in taxpayer dollars to defend the interests of big oil companies, Ron Paul would allow the free market to develop cost-effective alternative energy sources as oil becomes more scarce.
Oil is critical, but it is not a magic commodity that somehow is immune from the laws of economics. In fact, it is precisely because oil is so critical to our economy that we must allow the free market to deliver it. Absent government interference in the oil markets, gas prices would rise or fall according to concrete realities affecting supply and demand. High prices would encourage conservation better than any environmental regulations. Entrepreneurs would race to develop viable alternate fuels if gas prices rose too much.
Critics of Ron Paul's free market policies might suspect that corporate executives with little concern for the environment would be his biggest supporters. Yet if that were the case, why are the big corporate donors giving to Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton instead? Ron Paul raises nearly all of his funds from individual donors, a great portion of it in donations of less than two hundred dollars. Big business greatly prefers big government that it can buy out and control to the unpredictable competition the free market.
Ron Paul's free market policies would foster the prosperity and innovation that could dramatically improve environmental quality, while his insistence on private property rights would help limit pollution and environmental damage from big business by holding them legally liable for it. Voters who like Ron Paul's principled stands on foreign policy and Constitutional liberties can rest assured that he would protect the environment as well their individual rights.
