I usually like to consider myself a humanitarian, one who tries to extend his benevolence to all forms of nature and life. Thus, it greatly saddens me to see our great Mother Earth used and abused so nonchalantly by her very own creations. While the topic of global climate change may be…contentious, to say the least, it is still an undeniable fact that much of the Earth’s environment has become polluted and unfit to sustain various forms of life. Who is responsible for this decimation and what can we do to stop this? Abolish Sovereign Immunity
Its common knowledge that those who commit a crime should be held accountable for their actions and the backlash that comes with it…everyone except the government that is. The government has committed so many environment-related atrocities that one would wonder why anyone would trust them with the task of preserving nature. In 1984, the Department of Energy and Defense was demanded by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to clean up seventeen of their weapons plants which were leaking toxic, radioactive chemicals. The amount of money it would take to clean up such a mess reached over $100 billion (which would take approximately fifty years to pay off). Not only were the EPA ignored, but nobody was jailed or sued for damages! Why? Government departments have sovereign immunity.
In 1984, a Utah court ruled that the military was being negligent in its nuclear testing due to it causing death for anyone exposed to the radioactive fallout. The victims, however, were dismissed by the Court of Appeals because the government has sovereign immunity. As if that wasn’t enough, the Niagra Falls School Board in New York was begged by Hooker Chemical not to excavate the land where Hooker had safely stowed away toxic waste. The School Board did it anyway at the cost of $30 million in taxpayer money when a bill had to be passed after health problems arose. The EPA filed suit against Hooker instead of the school board because government officials have…you guessed it, sovereign immunity.
There are many things we can do to help stop pollution and I believe that the first step we should take is to make the government accountable for their inconsiderate actions. We must eliminate sovereign immunity. The privilege has for too long been abused. The government has literally gotten away with murder and nobody seems to care at all.
Privatization
Another action we should take is to privatize both “land and beast.” What do I mean by that? Let me explain. The government (both federal and local) own more than 40% of the nation’s land mass. The Bureau of Land Management alone controls an area twice as large as Texas which is often rented out to ranchers for grazing cattle. Much of the land, however, goes all to hell because these ranchers do not have an incentive to properly take care of it. Many studies, some from as early as 1925, show that cattle were twice as likely to die early on public ranges and had half as many calves as animals grazing on private lands. Owners have an incentive to prevent all of this. The government should sell its land to private ranchers to help prevent environmental decimation while also maximizing profit and yield.
Not only that, but private ownership of wildlife can also prevent animals from becoming endangered or extinct. The Kenyan government tried banning elephant hunting back in the 70’s and 80’s but that ended up in utter failure. The elephant population dropped from 65,000 to 19,000. During the same time period, Zimbabwe allowed elephants to be sold and owned privately. Since owners were protective of their property, poachers could not hunt the elephants and their population rose from 30,000 to 43,000.
It is very clear from our nation’s history that the government is more interested in serving special interest groups than being wise, practical, and careful with nature. Even national parks like Yellowstone are not safe from this abuse. Once, the employees were instructed to trap the park’s various predators so that the hoofed mammals favored by visitors would flourish. Any fourth grader who has a basic natural science class can tell you why this is a bad idea. It upset the ecological balance in the park. The elk drove out the deer and sheep and destroyed the beaver’s habitat. Without the beaver, many animal species including the trout were threatened. When the trout was threatened, the grizzly bears…became upset. To prevent the visitors from becoming bear food, park officials were forced to get rid of the bears and start importing other predators like wolves back in to deal with the elk.
We’d be better off letting naturalist organizations such as the Audubon Society run our parks. They use natural gas wells in an ecologically sound manner, showing that technology and nature can co-exist peacefully and profitably.
Restitution
Environmental restoration is costly, difficult, and does little to prevent the decimation of nature in the long-run. What can prevent pollution before it even begins is restitution. In Britain, individuals have property rights in the rivers that run throughout the land. If some loser decides to pollute the river upstream, the owners downstream can immediately sue and claim restitution for the damage done to their property. They do not have to wait on bureaucratic commissions. Since this would be extremely terrible for them financially, would-be polluters are effectively deterred from hurting the environment. Waterways owned by the government have no such luck and even if the government does take some action against corporate polluters, restitution is rarely required. It basically becomes a slap on the wrist since the fines are usually small enough for the businesses to pay off easily.
In conclusion
When it comes to protecting Mother Earth, the government fails oh-so spectacularly. Instead of using restitution to deter potentially dangerous products, the government simply bans them. For example, the insecticide DDT eradicated insects that carried malaria, yellow fever, and other harmful diseases, especially in Third World countries. Pressured by the ban placed on this chemical by the U.S. government, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) abandoned spraying DDT in 1964. Malaria rose from less than two dozen cases per year to over 2 million. The victims received no justice because governments have sovereign immunity.
By implementing these three Libertarian policies, we can prevent further damage to the environment, hold the government accountable for atrocities that any individual person wouldn’t dream of getting away with, and save the lives of millions of animals and human beings everywhere!
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Interesting. Will respond more fully later. Very interesting though.
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