Posts by Laura Huggins

by Laura Huggins

A recent editorial in the New York Times points out that Republicans in the next Congress are set on limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate a wide range of air pollutants and urges the White House to support the EPA.

But as Henry Miller writes in a response, the EPA's policies and procedures "have often been textbook examples of how not to regulate." Miller reports that the risk of fatality to the average worker at Superfund toxic waste sites is actually larger than the "cancer risks to individuals that might result from exposures to unremediated sites."

True. But perhaps the root of the problem is Congress, not the EPA. As David Schoenbrod suggests in PERC Reports:

By leaving lawmaking to the EPA, legislators shy away from such responsibility. They bestow a right to protection without themselves imposing any burden. The anger falls on the EPA because it is left with the job of allocating the burdens among pollution sources. The EPA takes the blame for denying rights and imposing burdens.

by Laura Huggins

Here's what not to buy for your kids: books like Where Does the Garbage Go?, Oil Spill!, and What’s So Bad About Gasoline?

As PERC fellow Andy Morriss writes in this essay on eco-propaganda for kids, "If these books are what kids grow up with today, we should hope they spend their time on video games instead of reading." The books are troubling, according to Morriss, because by "ignoring economics and by focusing on eco-politics, they get the solutions to environmental problems wrong."

Furthermore, as PERC's Holly Fretwell discusses in PERC Reports, many  green-themed children's book, including classroom textbooks, are influenced “by an ideological view that presents human beings as evil.” The patriarch of the vogue green books is Carl Hiaasen, the author of Hoot and Scat. In Hiaasen's books children are asked to sympathize with environmentalists who thwart businessmen, even when the good guys take destructive measures such as sinking boats. Good nature, bad capitalist is always the theme.

Finally, as Morriss points out:

The vision of the world these books present lacks human agency as anything other than motivating the mindless consumption that leads to ecological catastrophes. Not only is this a world missing entrepreneurs and inventors, there’s also no excitement to its vision of the future. Although I am still waiting for my personal jetpack, the world of the The Jetsons promised a future of excitement and fun rather than a grim time in which we merely replace our cars with hybrids. The optimism that prompted Julian Simon to term humanity “the ultimate resource” is missing from this literature.

Last week, PERC was featured on the Fox Business Channel's Stossel program for a Thanksgiving special giving thanks to property rights. Executive director Terry Anderson joined Manny Jules, former chief of the Kamloops Indian Band, to discuss how property ownership benefits Native Americans.

Watch the video interview from Fox here.

American Indian tribes are the single largest land holders in the United States; in aggregate nearly 100 million acres—an area just smaller than California. And much of these lands are rich in natural resources. Along with timber, grazing, and crop lands, other resources include oil, coal, and  uranium.

One might think such assets would equal prosperity. Not so for the majority of American Indians. The same variables important to economic prosperity in developing countries are important on Indian reservations. Without institutions that reduce the temptation for government to engage in transfer activities and without private property creating a reward for productivity, Terry Anderson says, “Indian economies are likely to remain enclaves of poverty in a sea of prosperity."

The impact of insecure property rights can be seen on almost any reservation. Some families of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, for example, are still living with no electricity, telephone, running water, or sewer. On this reservation, the eighth largest, unemployment hovers around 80 percent and 49 percent live below the federal poverty level. The life expectancies are in the high 40s for males and the low 50s for females.

On the bright side, starting with The Self Determination Act and followed by a series of compacts, some tribes have taken a lead in assuming management responsibility for their reservation. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai on the Flathead Reservation (Stossel showed an aerial image of this reservation) have been successful at starting small businesses and at managing their timber resources (see PERC's "Two Forests Under the Big Sky"). The White Mountain Apache operate a sustainable logging operation and a lucrative elk hunting camp, all without Bureau of Indian Affairs control. In both of these cases individuals are rewarded for their initiative and tribal governments refrain from counterproductive redistribution. This direction offers a new path for reservations still caught in a collectivist trap.

For more on property rights in Indian societies, see Self-Determination: The Other Path for Native Americans, edited by Terry Anderson, Bruce Benson, and Thomas Flanagan.

by Laura Huggins

In my neck of the woods there's a saying that pertains to endangered species; "shoot, shovel, and shut-up." Interestingly, in the case of the rare (and not too cute and cuddly) Amargoso toad, the local folk are working hard to protect it.

What keeps these land owners from shoot, shovel, and shut-upping? Do the locals simply have an inherent liking for this little critter or is it that they dislike the Endangered Species Act so much that they are willing to pay to keep the toad from being listed? NPR reports:

A small environmental miracle has occurred in Beatty, Nev., a former mining town that sits on the eastern edge of Death Valley between Jackass Flats and Sober Up Gulch. The people of Beatty have helped revive the Amargosa toad, a warty, speckled, palm-sized creature that's unique to the area and, just a few years ago, seemed headed for extinction. But this is not your typical story of environmental action — the toad owes its comeback to an unlikely coalition that includes ranchers, miners, off-road racers, opponents of big government and the local brothel.

"What you're seeing tonight are the results of active land management, active habitat management," says rancher David Spicer. He has run miles of underground pipe around his property to create breeding pools and wet habitat for the toads. Spicer grew up with the toads and wants to preserve them, he says. But here's the surprising thing: Another reason, and perhaps the major reason Spicer has gone to such lengths is because he really, really does not like the Endangered Species Act.

"Nobody trusts the government anymore," Spicer says. "Nobody wants to work with the government. The government always wants to take something from you." So Spicer got worried more than a decade ago when some scientists declared that there were only a few dozen Amargosa toads left. Soon after that, when a group petitioned the federal government to add the toad to the endangered species list, Spicer came up with a plan.

Spicer feared the government would try to protect the toads by telling him he couldn't raise cattle or ride off-road vehicles on his own property. So he helped start a group called STORM-OV, which stands for Saving Toads thru Off-Road Racing, Mining and Ranching in Oasis Valley.

It's a quirky kind of environmentalism. But it seems to be working. This year's toad counts show that their numbers remain in the thousands. And earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rejected the latest petition to place the Amargosa toad on the endangered species list."