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Book Review
| Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy. Edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute, 2005. 467 pp. Index, notes, references. Paper $22.95.
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| For those who still feel the exhilaration of the 1970s, when environmentalism became a creed and new federal legislation its liturgy, this book might seem the work of the devil. But this isn't a malicious devil, merely devilish—teasing, insightful, provocative, and occasionally even fun. The essays chosen by this book's two editors, scholars at the libertarian-leaning Independent Institute, will sometimes make you angry. But they will also make you take a fresh look at some of the environmental dogma that has come to be taken as gospel. |
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A sampling:
Environmental catastrophists warn of a warming planet, overpopulation, a sixth mass extinction, too few pollinating insects, etc. They cry "emergency" and tell us to "do as we say," according to one essay. "The real danger now ... is not that we stand on the verge of destroying nature, but that, stampeded by environmental terrors on every hand, we are plunging over the cliff into totalitarianism" (p. 58). |
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Would a conservationist ever countenance oil drilling in a wildlife preserve? This essay reminds us that the Audubon Society is reaping the royalties produced by thirty-seven oil and gas wells in one of its sanctuaries. "Environmentalists would immediately see the advantages of drilling in [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] if they were responsible for both the costs and the benefits of that drilling," it concludes (p. 248). |
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Does the Endangered Species Act protect endangered species? Not necessarily. Another essay cites the example of private timber owners who feared that endangered woodpeckers on their property would bring on the feds with fistfuls of prohibitions. So they cut down trees with nesting holes in them, then sawed out the portions with the holes and destroyed them. |
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Do we celebrate Africa's great game preserves? Then consider the Mkomazi Reserve in Tanzania, where a millennia-old herding culture was forcibly uprooted and replaced by an "authentic" African wilderness. The international conservation organizations that helped to perpetrate this act of cultural vandalism, according to this essay, "belong in the same category as Hollywood producers of illusion." |
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Do we value the existence of a remote wilderness park, even if we know we will never visit it? "Existence value," the writer of this essay maintains, is the same quality that gives God meaning to religious people. His conclusion: If the pious pay for churches in which to observe their faith, nature lovers should pay for the parks where they practice their own brand of secular religion. "My arguments suggest that the present national system of wilderness areas should be privatized," he writes (p. 409). |
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Despite their polemical strengths, these essays would be more persuasive if they took a less parochial view in at least two areas. First, this is mainly a book about America, a nation of strong public institutions and rule by law, where citizens can enjoy the luxury of debating political principles. Its insights have less relevance in many other countries, where weak, ineffectual governmental institutions are driven largely by the principles of greed, corruption, and impunity. In some of these countries, people are working hard to create systems of laws and institutions to solve some very serious environmental problems. The challenges facing them are pragmatic, not philosophic. Second, as should be obvious by now, Re-Thinking Green is more about promoting a political viewpoint than protecting the environment. The editors say as much: "The most important claim [in the book] is that environmental bureaucracy has contributed to the corrosion of America's best legal and political traditions, undermining such core institutions as private-property rights, the rule of law, representative government, and individual liberty." John Muir would have set off from a different trailhead. |
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Roger Hamilton is editor of the magazine of the Inter-American Development Bank. He reports and writes extensively on biodiversity conservation in Latin America. The views expressed here represent his views alone, and not necessarily those of the institution. |
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