The term energy encompasses a plethora of technologies, and each attracts the gimlet eye of Big Brother. In recent years environmental groups have been very successful in insinuating themselves into the halls of government so that today there is a revolving door between government and the environmental movement. And it’s just like the revolving
Environmentalism is the doctrine that explains historical changes as produced by the environment in which people are living. There are two varieties of this doctrine: the doctrine of physical or geographical environmentalism and the doctrine of social or cultural environmentalism. The former doctrine asserts that the essential features of a
The Free Market 28, no. 1 (January 2010) Climate-change policy ought to be privatized. All government policy instruments, including taxes, subsidies, regulation, and emissions trading to mitigate climate change ought to be abolished. Instead, property rights to a climate unchanged by human activity should be protected by tort litigation on the
It was 21 years ago that the Exxon Valdez leaked oil and unleashed torrents of environmental hysteria. Rothbard got it right in his piece “Why Not Feel Sorry for Exxon?” After the British Petroleum–hired oil rig exploded last week, the environmentalists went nuts yet again, using the occasion to flail a private corporation and wail about the
[This article is a response to Paul Baer et al., “Greenhouse Development Rights: A Proposal for a Fair Global Climate Treaty,” Ethics, Place & Environment , volume 12, issue 3 (2009).] There are not one but rather two schools of thought on the environment and its challenges. For want of better nomenclature, I shall characterize them as the
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.