Overview

Most environmental pollution to date has occurred because governments have allowed industries to pollute government property -- rivers, streams, lakes, roads, and lands. Most clear-cutting and strip-mining occur on government property because the offenders have no stake in the future value of the land. Pollution seldom occurs on private property, because property owners are concerned about the future value of their property. Obviously, pollution would diminish if more property were taken out of the hands of government and turned over to private owners for protection.

Saving the Environment

America's environmental problems are obvious. Toxic wastes are being dumped into waterways, forests are being clear-cut, and vast tracts of land are being strip-mined.

But what isn't so obvious is who is committing these outrages, who is allowing them, and why. Why would landowners allow such pollution when they know it will reduce the value of their property? To understand why this is happening we first have to understand who does the polluting, where they do it, and why.

Who, where, why?

There are three principal potential sources of pollution:

1. Private companies who pollute their own property.
2. Government agencies that allow private tenants to pollute government property.
3. Government agencies that pollute government property.

What is overlooked is that most pollution actually occurs on government-owned property, rather than privately owned land. It is easy to understand why this might be so. Private owners have an interest in preserving their property, so it can be sold for a good price at a later date. But the government has no such incentive, and is therefore less likely to give its properties the care they need.

Do Private Companies Pollute Their Own Property?

Toxic wastes are an inevitable and necessary byproduct of the production of the chemicals that make our life safer and easier. To eliminate the chemicals would return us to a primitive existence with a much shorter life expectancy. Toxic wastes -- even when disposed of carelessly -- cause far fewer deaths than would be caused by the absence of the products for which the toxic wastes are a byproduct. And in fact, the natural environment itself is full of toxins. After all, dangerous elements such as arsenic, lead, uranium, and other substances are widely distributed throughout the environment, and the natural life processes of plants and animals also produce toxins.

So the question isn't whether there should be toxic wastes, but how those wastes should be handled. When companies own their own toxic waste sites, they generally handle them responsibly for the simple reason that to do otherwise would jeopardize their profits and their business.

You may remember the Love Canal scandal in the late 1970s. It is perhaps the classic example of the way politicians and the press misrepresent environmental issues. And it illustrates the difference between private stewardship and government carelessness.

Love Canal is actually a trench, rather than a canal, near Niagara Falls, New York. It was intended to be a canal but the project was abandoned in the early 20th century. From 1920 onward the trench was a trash and chemical disposal site. In 1942 the Hooker Chemical & Plastics Company, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, purchased Love Canal.

The company buried its toxic wastes in the trench, and allowed the city of Niagara Falls and the U.S. Army to dump wastes there as well. Hooker took special pains with the waste material long before toxic wastes were a public issue, making sure it was buried in a way that prevented leaks.

In 1953 the Niagara Falls Board of Education decided it wanted to build a school on top of the trench. The Hooker executives refused to sell the property because of the buried wastes -- afraid that any construction would cause gases to escape.

But the Board of Education persisted and threatened to confiscate the property by eminent domain. And so Hooker agreed to sell Love Canal to the school board for $1 -- provided that the deed of sale included a prohibition on any construction over the buried toxic wastes. The school board agreed, promising to use that area only for a playground.

But within one year the government school board violated the contract and announced its intention to construct the school directly on top of the toxic wastes. Hooker protested publicly and vehemently, citing the danger involved. The school board ignored the warnings and built the school anyway. And the presence of the school soon led to the building of new homes around it.

By the 1970s the chemical wastes were leaking, and nearby residents complained of odors and fumes. A consulting company investigated and recommended a number of measures that might reseal the wastes and stop the leakage. But the city government ignored the recommendations.

Finally, in 1978 a state agency investigated and recommended closing the school, evacuating all pregnant women from the area, and banning the eating of home-grown vegetables. The state purchased and leveled 239 of the homes near the canal. Eventually, everyone in the Love Canal area was evacuated and relocated -- paid for by the state and federal governments.

The Love Canal scandal was widely publicized. Hooker Chemical Company was condemned by politicians, journalists, and the public as a heartless, irresponsible company for having dumped toxic wastes into Love Canal.

But no one seemed to want to ask the obvious and important question: why did the school board build on top of a trench that was known to contain toxic wastes -- especially in the face of Hooker's public warnings? And why did the government school board ignore the deed restriction that prohibited it from building over the wastes ñ a deed restriction that Hooker Chemical had insisted upon? And why was it that the wastes had never been a problem until the government decided to disturb them?

Hooker was forced to pay out over $200 million in settlements to residents and reimbursement to government agencies -- even though Hooker was the only entity involved that acted responsibly.

The true story of Love Canal was always available to any reporter who cared to know the truth. Hooker's protests against building a school there were a matter of public record. The city archives contained the deed of sale, showing the stipulation against building on the waste site. Old newspapers carried reports of the public hearings at which Hooker warned against building on the canal.

But at the time of the scandal, the networks and wire services relied for their "facts" on the politicians' self-serving accusations against Hooker Chemical & Plastics Company. The company's reputation never recovered.

Eventually, Eric Zuesse of Reason magazine dug up the truth and published it. But by then the press and the politicians had moved on to new examples of "corporate greed" and no one in the national press paid attention to Zuesse' findings.

The Love Canal affair may appear to be an unusual example, but only because you now know details about it that the general press doesn't usually report. Reporters always seem to believe the worst about private companies -- while assuming that only government agencies are interested in protecting the environment.

Meanwhile, the politicians have the greatest interest in exploiting any scandal by condemning private freedom and supporting increased government power.

But the truth is that government isn't the answer. Politicians and government administrators have no incentive to preserve government properties, because they have no stake in the future value of those properties. Private executives must answer to shareholders, and they must be able to show that company-owned properties aren't deteriorating in value.

So only private companies can be counted on to treat their properties carefully.

Private Companies Polluting Government Property

Governments at all levels lease their property out to private interests -- for mining, drilling, logging and grazing. They allow companies to dump toxic wastes in their lakes and streams, and to clear-cut or strip-mine its lands.

Why? Because no one in the government is hurt personally by the damage done. If a private company were to pollute its own property, the board of directors would demand that the responsible person be fired. But that doesn't happen with government, because the polluters generally are companies with the political influence to gain access to government property -- through leases, special arrangements, or just indifference on the part of government administrators.

Examples are legion -- of government-owned hills blown apart by water hoses for mining purposes, of the thousands of miles of roads the Forestry Department has built in our national forests merely to allow private interests to cut down and remove old growth trees.

Government Polluting Government Property

But even these examples pale in comparison to the government's own polluting.

The ravaging of government lands by politically connected companies has been well-publicized for years -- even if the press has ignored the fact that government managers shouldn't have allowed anyone to pollute government property.

But now evidence is coming to light of how badly government itself is polluting its own property.

In November 1999 the Boston Globe published a 4-part series that documented how badly government has ravaged its own holdings.

Here is how David Armstrong, the Globe reporter, summarized the situation:

The United States government, which acts as steward and protector of the nation's environment, is itself the worst polluter in the land.

Federal agencies have contaminated more than 60,000 sites across the country and the cost of cleaning up the worst sites is officially expected to approach $300 billion, nearly five times the price of similar destruction caused by private companies. . . . 

Nearly every military base and nuclear arms facility in the country is contaminated. The pollution extends from the US Mint, which released hazardous chemicals into the air when producing commemorative coins, to the national parks, where leaky oil tanks and raw sewage are polluting pristine rivers.

Even the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], charged with enforcing the country's environmental laws, has been fined for violating toxic waste laws at its laboratories. At the EPA's lab in Lexington, for example, mercury was discovered leaching into the ground water three years ago. ["The Nation's Dirty Big Secret," The Boston Globe, November 14, 1999]

From raw sewage flowing into the lakes and streams of Yellowstone National Park to U.S. Navy oil spills in Washington's Puget Sound to PCBs making fish inedible in the Shenandoah River, the administrators of government facilities have paid no attention to the devastation they've caused. And why should they? Unlike private companies, government agencies are exempt from almost all the strict, expensive laws the politicians pass to demonstrate their concern for the environment.

The EPA has estimated that it will cost about $57 billion to clean up all the privately owned SuperFund sites in America. If that price tag seems large, consider that the EPA estimates the cost of cleaning up all the sites polluted directly by the federal government to be at least $280 billion.

This isn't an accident. It isn't a case of hiring the wrong people to manage government property or to run government agencies. It is the direct result of giving control of property to people who have no personal interest in its future value.

The solution to America's pollution problems is to get as much property as possible out of the hands of government. Private owners will always take better care of land and other resources, because they worry about the future resale value of these resources. Government administrators have no reason to care about the future value of anything under their care.

Air Pollution

Air pollution is more complicated than land or water pollution. It isn't easy to define the ownership of air space and sort out air pollution problems in court.

But we can be sure of five points that are overlooked when people call on the federal government to clean up the air . . . 

First, the Constitution gives the federal government no authority to regulate air quality.

Second, why should costly federal air-quality mandates designed to stop smog in Los Angeles be enforced in Seattle -- which has no similar problems? If the people in Los Angeles don't like the air there, don't they have enough of an incentive to solve the problem -- without federal dictates? And if they don't care, why should people in other parts of the country, who aren't affected by the Los Angeles air, have to pay for the changes?

Do we really believe the Washington politicians know best what's good for every part of America? Or that money sent to Washington will become more valuable than if it were left in the state from which it came?

Third, environmental regulations are just as much tools for the politically connected as any other kind of government program.

For example, suppose the EPA forces a new factory in rural Tennessee to install the same new anti-pollution equipment as a plant in Los Angeles, even though there's no smog problem in Tennessee. This imposes costs on the Tennessee factory that otherwise could be more efficient -- offering its product at a lower price -- than the Los Angeles company.

Wasting the money in Tennessee is bad enough, but that might not be the end of it. The Los Angeles plant may be "grandfathered" by the regulation -- meaning that the new regulations don't apply to existing factories -- the ones actually causing the air pollution. So the EPA rule can force a new, non-polluting Tennessee factory to spend enormous sums of money on anti-smog devices -- while an older, polluting Los Angeles factory gets off without any expense. As with many laws, regulations often don't even affect the companies and individuals they're supposed to regulate, but they do create enormous problems for innocent bystanders.

Fourth, cars built in the 1960s polluted much less than the cars of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. But in the 1960s there was no Environmental Protection Agency forcing manufacturers to abide by federal standards. Why, then, were cars getting progressively cleaner? Because that's what people wanted -- and once the technology was available, that's what people got.

To say that government must force manufacturers to provide clean cars is to ignore history -- and to ignore the fact that companies have a strong motivation to provide what people want. Having politicians determine what's good for people is a recipe for exploiting people on behalf of those with the most political influence.

And fifth, when decisions are made politically, they are almost always made without regard to all the potential consequences. The EPA has forced car-makers to build smaller cars. The rationale is to produce more fuel-efficient cars that will reduce the demand for gasoline and that will save lives by reducing the air pollution that fuel produces.

Both reasons ignore more important considerations. The desire for fuel efficiency was born in the 1970s when price controls on oil and natural gas in the U.S. discouraged the development of new petroleum sources to compete with the OPEC oil cartel. Since the price controls were removed in 1981, oil production has boomed, oil prices have plummeted, and there has been no need to conserve oil. But the perception that fuel efficiency is somehow virtuous remains with us to this day.

And meanwhile lives are being lost because smaller cars are more dangerous than larger cars. In fact, more traffic deaths are caused by reducing the size of cars than have been saved by reducing air pollution. The Competitive Enterprise Institute estimates that between 2,600 and 4,500 of 1998's 21,000 car deaths were attributable to the smaller cars that were produced to conform to the EPA's fuel economy standards. And a 1989 study by Harvard University and the Brookings Institute estimates that fuel-economy mandates cause a 14-27% increase in yearly traffic deaths.

Whatever may turn out to be the best course of action to handle air pollution, it certainly isn't to give Congressmen and federal bureaucrats the power to force their choices on your city and every other city in America.

Recycling

Another environmental area that has been treated superficially by the politicians and the press is the drive to have you and everyone else recycle your trash.

Supposedly, we are running out of resources, running out of places to put trash, and in need of recycled materials to stop the pollution that comes with manufacturing.

However, there is a simple test of whether some resource is becoming so rare that recycling is warranted. If the price of a recycled material is less than the price of producing that material anew, the resource is in short enough supply that recycling makes sense. In that case, recyclers will pay you for your cast-offs, and you'll save money by buying goods made with recycled materials. So you won't have to be pressured to recycle; your self-interest will motivate you to do so.

But if you don't get paid when you turn in materials to be recycled, and if recycled products cost more than brand new products, it's obvious that recycling is using more resources than it would take to produce the material from scratch. In that case, recycling merely satisfies someone's belief that sacrificing your time and money will make you a better person.

This same principle applies to other environmental issues. If the government has to subsidize an alternative form of energy -- such as solar heating or electric cars -- it's obvious that we are switching from a resource in great supply to one in shorter supply.

But what about the shortage of places to put trash? Doesn't recycling save space that would otherwise be used for landfills? Yes, it does, but so what? As Roy E. Cordato has pointed out: "If all the solid waste for the next thousand years were put into a single space, it would take up 44 square miles of landfill, a mere .01% of the U.S. land space."

He also pointed out that recycling can cause just as much pollution as new manufacturing does. And recycling doesn't save trees; it reduces the number of them. Trees are planted in response to the demand for new paper and other timber products. Private companies plant enough trees to meet the expected demand well into the future. If people recycle paper products, fewer trees are needed and fewer are planted -- just as the supply responds to the demand for grains, meat, minerals, or anything else.

So if you throw away paper products when you're finished with them, don't feel guilty. Feel proud that you're reducing pollution, saving valuable resources, and inspiring a timber company to plant more trees.

Global Warming and Other Alarms

From the cranberry cancer scare of the 1950s to the Alar-in-apples hysteria of the 1980s, from the "new ice age" of the 1960s to the "global warming" of the 1990s, environmental alarms almost always turn out to be false. Few non-political scientists fear ozone loss, global warming, or acid rain. These are just issues that some people hope to use to reorder the lives of the rest of us.

As William L. Anderson has pointed out:

Few among us remember the Carter Administration's Global 2000 Report to the President . . . in 1980. The report . . . predicted mass starvation, massive amounts of pollution, and increasing hunger and poverty for all by the year 2000 unless "the nations of the world act decisively to alter current trends."

"Decisive action," of course, meant further government control of all resources. But even though the government didn't act to take greater control of resources, none of the scare stories proved to be an accurate forecast. In fact, has any such scare story ever turned out to be an accurate prediction?

In the 1970s, the prevailing wisdom was that gasoline prices would exceed $2 a gallon by the end of the decade, and that Arabs would soon own half the United States. But in the 1980s the Arab threat miraculously disappeared. Was this because the federal Department of Energy rode to our rescue? No, it was because the government did something sensible for a change: it reduced its own power by eliminating government price controls on oil and natural gas.

But then the new danger came from the Japanese -- who also were about to own most of the U.S. The Japanese companies were heavily subsidized by the government, so it was argued that we needed to do the same in our country. But within just a few years American companies had adjusted to the competitive pressures, without the need for government subsidies, and it was the bloated, pampered Japanese companies that were in trouble.

Then there is the New Ice Age that was predicted in the 1960s. When that didn't pan out, the alarmists decided that Global Warming made more sense. What will come next -- dangerously moderate temperatures?

These scares -- and many more like them -- were all accompanied by urgent demands that the government take action, reduce the freedom of greedy individuals to wantonly destroy Mother Earth, and impose oppressive controls on Americans. Fortunately, none of the oppressive prescriptions was enacted, and the fearful expectations evaporated on their own. So new scares were developed -- complete with new demands for government action, new designs to reduce your freedom, and new plans to restrict the ability of business to provide the products and services you need and want.

Like other arguments about the environment, global warming isn't a scientific question, it's a political issue. Just as with the alarms about the ozone layer, air pollution, dwindling resources, endangered species, or anything else, the preferred solution is always the same -- more government.

Meanwhile, over 17,000 scientists -- none of whom has a vested interest in polluting industries -- have signed a petition to the U.S. government that says in part:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth. [The Petition Project, organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine]

The supposed struggle to save the planet is really a struggle for power -- power over your life. So politicians and environmental extremists never wait for their claims to be proven before demanding to turn our lives upside down. They tell us we can't afford to wait for proof; we must do something right now -- even if no one is sure what the problem is, even if no one knows whether the program they demand will really solve anything, and even if a solution might be discovered tomorrow that wouldn't require upsetting everyone's life.

The Correct Way to Protect the Environment

While the politicians and the environmental extremists make all the noise, there are thousands of concerned people doing things that actually make a positive difference.

While politicians and political activists keep reaching for more land to be put into the hands of the government mismanagers, organizations like the Nature Conservancy raise money from voluntary donors to purchase properties they don't want to fall into the hands of developers.

Companies building new plants make them more energy-efficient, simply to save on costs. No one has to browbeat them to do what's in their own self-interest. Too often, however, environmental regulations apply to new plants but not to old ones. Thus a company defers building a new energy-efficient plant in order to avoid being subject to the regulations.

Other people are working to deregulate the electric power industry, so that power companies will have an incentive to reduce energy costs. Today almost all government-regulated power companies are forced to charge on a cost-plus basis -- that is, electricity rates are based on how much it costs the companies to produce the power. There is no incentive for the companies to become more efficient, since their profit margin is guaranteed by the government.

People concerned about species that appear to be dying out are buying up properties where those species flourish. If they turn out to be wrong in their expectations, only they will lose; you won't be taxed to pay for someone else's guess or pet project.

As with every good thing we enjoy today, future environmental blessings will come from people acting voluntarily in their own interests -- not from politicians imposing unproven, untested designs upon you and me.

What Is the Issue?

We are led to believe that the issue today is one of private property rights vs. government protection of the environment. But if government is unable to keep its own properties pristine, why should we give it control over your property? Shouldn't we begin by getting as much property as possible out of the hands of the government and see what happens?

Shouldn't we choose a system in which every administrator of property is personally responsible for the results? Shouldn't we discard a system in which politicians are free to give politically connected companies the license to pollute land -- without either the politicians or the polluters having to pay for the damage?

The next time you hear of a greedy corporate polluter, strip-miner, or clear-cutter, notice who owns the property that's being polluted. Chances are it is some government agency. Ask yourself how much cleaner that property would be if it had a private owner who cared about its future value. Even if it is sold to the very same corporation that is causing the pollution under the cover of its government lease or grant, you can bet the pollution will stop as soon as the corporation has a vested interest in the future value of the property.

The next time someone says government must impose some new environmental regulation, ask yourself whether you want to give the politicians one more tool with which to further their own political interests at your expense.

The answer to environmental problems isn't to expand the reach of government, but to shrink it. We cannot expect environmental problems to be solved by the same government agencies who are currently destroying our forests, creating improperly maintained nuclear waste dumps, and eroding the soil from western lands through irresponsible mining leases.

If we want a cleaner environment, we must get as much property as possible out of the hands of the politicians and the bureaucrats, reduce the federal government to its Constitutional limits, prevent politicians from interfering with scientific matters, and let motivated individuals deal with environmental problems.

The Quotable Harry Browne: On the Environment

"Genuine environmental problems aren't your fault. Your home is probably as clean and pollution-free as mine. Owners of private property naturally are more considerate of resources than users of government property. Respect for the environment is incompatible with government ownership or control of property. The answer to environmental problems isn't to expand the reach of government, but to shrink it. No problems will be solved by the people who gave us the U.S. Postal Service and the Savings & Loan crisis."

"Government control of the environment is bad for business, bad for consumers, bad for America, and bad for the environment."

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Other resources

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Reason magazine's 1981 analysis of Love Canal