Question Earthority!

Guest editorial by Brian Holtz
Originally published at Libertarian Intelligence

I wouldn’t rely on only fashion and torts to police chemical assault, any more than I would rely only on them to police spousal assault. I don’t think the [Libertarian Party] has enough consensus to specify all the details of how the legal system should police chemical assault, but I will never agree with Platform language saying that torts and fashion are the only acceptable libertarian response to it. Even a Rothschilds-control-the-Fed government-planned-9/11 conspiracy enthusiast like Aaron Russo protested against having to run for President under the LP’s torts-only environmental plank.

If the Platform should say that private lawsuits should be the only response to chemical assault, why shouldn’t the Platform say that about all kinds of assault? Why not hold high the Rothbardian banner of private defense agencies? Why hide the lamp of liberty under a basket?

I just don’t agree that the LP Platform should enforce the narrow dogma that there is no such thing as what economists call market failure. Read the rest of this entry »

“Dear Pablo, I would like to use LED lighting to replace all my existing lighting. Over the long run, will I be reducing energy consumption and pollution, and even saving money?” (05/05/08)

“The government said Wednesday it is calling off a recently announced moratorium on applications to build solar plants on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management made the announcement after public opposition to its original decision, reached at the end of May. The BLM had wanted to put new applications for solar plants on federal land on hold while undertaking a comprehensive review of potential environmental impacts from such plants. That review was not scheduled for completion until May 2010.” (07/02/08)

“Revetec, a company from Australia’s Gold Coast, may have a bright idea for beleaguered drivers everywhere — and it’s got nothing to do with the size of your car: it’s all about the engine. The new engine from Revetec is half the size and weight of a traditional engine, and has 50 percent fewer emissions.” (07/03/08)

“Continuing to press the themes of values, faith and patriotism, Sen. Barack Obama exhorted Americans on Wednesday ‘to step into the strong currents of history’ and volunteer for service to their country, pledging to dramatically expand opportunities for those accepting his challenge. … At $3.5 billion a year, his service plan, laid out last December and expanded on only slightly Wednesday, has been derided by conservatives as an example of big government. He would expand the AmeriCorps program established by President Bill Clinton by 250,000 slots, double the size of the Peace Corps by 2011, expand the Foreign Service, and create an Energy Corps to conduct renewable-energy and environmental-cleanup projects. Veterans would be enlisted to help other veterans find jobs and support, and a Social Investment Fund Network would support the nonprofit sector.” (07/03/08)

“Sacramento city officials on Wednesday admitted their code enforcement policies may not be drought-friendly, and said they won’t fine the couple featured in Wednesday’s Bee who let their front lawn die to save water. The story prompted a torrent of outrage from the public, who overwhelmingly supported Anne Hartridge and Matt George, the east Sacramento couple cited by city code enforcers after they stopped watering their lawn. … The city’s director of code enforcement, Max Fernandez, told The Bee on Wednesday the front-yard rules allow more flexibility than the code language indicates. The code states explicitly that front yards ’shall be landscaped, irrigated and maintained.’ This would seem to preclude yards that are simply mulched, like Hartridge’s, or those that use cactuses or other drought-tolerant plants requiring no water.” (07/03/08)

“The Environmental Protection Agency is ready to sign off on a clean air plan for the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The proposal would reduce ozone-forming pollutants by 88 tons per day. The amount is more than double what the earlier plan proposed. The EPA will take comments on the plan before making its final decision. … Environmental groups such as the Dallas Chapter of the Sierra Club said the plan is woefully short of where it needs to be.” (07/01/08)

“[I]t appears that the only comprehensive plan to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2020 is the one put out by Brown and his associates at the Earth Policy Institute. Partly this may be because Brown explicitly stated that he was not presenting what is politically feasible, but what is needed to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2020. Cutting emissions by 80 percent by 2050, as he pointed out, is more politically comfortable because it means you don’t have to do much now, but it is not what is needed. He discussed Jim Hansen’s goal of getting CO2 emissions down to 350 parts per million, a goal which could be targeted after 2020, as the next step after reducing emissions by 80 percent.” (07/02/08)

“Misanthropy is a poor prescription for policy reform, even for a problem as serious as climate change may be. Even governments that signed onto the Kyoto Accord are failing to meet their targets. And it is simply inconceivable that China and India will dramatically reduce their carbon emissions if this means slowing economic growth. Nordhaus and Shellenberger believe Kyoto has failed not only because it has failed to slow global warming, but also because it has closed off discussion of alternative approaches. They understand a key policy goal is to increase energy consumption so the world’s poorest people can continue their climb out of poverty. The challenge, and it’s daunting, is to do it in a way that moves us toward more secure, and cleaner, sources of energy.” (07/02/08)

“Harry Reid is right. Coal does make us sick. It’s not even debatable. It’s just the truth. The fact that Republicans think they can use this fact against Democrats tells me just how out of touch they are with the new realities of American politics. The only question is whether the McCain campaign will turn out to be equally misguided. The YouTube video of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appearing on the FOX Business Channel saying that ‘coal makes us sick’ is garnering huge numbers of hits, with some help from Matt Drudge, who put the link to it on his DrudgeReport. Republicans are reportedly sending the video around to try to make the point that Democrats are hopelessly out of touch with the need to produce more, and less expensive, fuel. If only it were twenty years ago. Or maybe thirty. It would work like a charm.” (07/02/08)

“Since I got interested in the question of what claims animals have on humans — their rights, if you will — I’ve suggested that it probably makes sense to consider animal rights and human obligations on a level well below that of the Kingdom. Apparently the Spanish are thinking similarly. While I find Ingrid Newkirk’s ‘a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy’ formulation absurd, I find the tacit or explicit Objectivist/Rothbardian/Evangelical (some, by no means all) counterpart, ‘a rat is a pig is a dog is a wrench,’ to be as obviously ridiculous. The duck and the gavage machine are not equivalent beings. Your moral system can sensibly consider a pet dog or a steer to be ‘property,’ but if you imagine them to be the same kind of ‘property’ as a car or an etch-a-sketch, your classifications are as vacuous as your betes (oops!) noires at the extreme end of the animal rights movement. ‘Property’ is a capacious term, and ‘property rights’ have always come in culturally inflected bundles.” (07/01/08)

“As concern over global warming grows, urban planning advocates have jumped on the bandwagon by claiming cities should reduce their carbon footprints by investing more in transit and compact development. However, these claims are not supported by the data, most of which show that transit and dense development are no more environmentally friendly than autos and low-density suburbs. This debate is an echo of efforts to reduce toxic air pollution, such as carbon monoxide and smog, which began in 1970. Some said we should encourage people to drive less and take transit more. Others said we should use new technologies to make the cars we drive cleaner. Looking back, we now know that technical solutions were phenomenally successful: though we drive three times as much as we did in 1970, total auto emissions are down by about two thirds.” (07/01/08)