Brewing Water Conservation in the West
Tate WatkinsA new market in Arizona shows how small innovations can help conserve water in the West—and why many more will be needed in the Colorado River Basin.
The Magazine of Free Market Environmentalism
Rather than uniting the communities of the American West, the region’s natural resources often divide them. The chasm between traditional commodity extraction and non-traditional amenity enjoyment is often made wider by the institutions that govern natural resources in the West. Legal and political institutions that raise the cost of resolving competing demands cooperatively through markets only exacerbate the acrimony over the use of resources in the region.
This special issue of PERC Reports, supported by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, explores the shifting demands placed on the West’s natural resources. It seeks to encourage a rigorous discussion of solutions that promote cooperation instead of conflict, entrepreneurship instead of acrimony, and compromise instead of litigation.
A new market in Arizona shows how small innovations can help conserve water in the West—and why many more will be needed in the Colorado River Basin.
Oregon ranchers who set out to restore streams in Silvies Valley find regulatory purgatory.
Creative conservationists search for innovative ways to pay for the natural amenities they value.
After years on the front lines of Colorado’s energy fights, here’s what I’ve learned about why natural resource issues are so divisive—and what to do about it.
This special issue of PERC Reports, supported by the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, explores the shifting demands placed on the West’s natural resources.
As New West meets Old West, conflict is the norm. It doesn’t have to be.
Examples of free market environmentalism in action.
How new markets can help align incentives that will reduce wildfire risk.
Our politics is broken when it doesn’t allow participants to state their ends plainly.
If you can’t drag them away, can you pay people to take them away?
It’s time for Congress to give western irrigators control of the water they use.