Economic Freedom Is Great for the Planet

Data show that free economies are cleaner than those dominated by central planning.

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The Biden administration’s Earth Day summit is being heralded by progressives as the United States’ triumphant return to the global stage on climate after years of neglect under President Trump. The summit is “an opportunity for the U.S. to come back onto the scene to show it is taking climate change seriously,” according to David Waskow, director of the International Climate Initiative.

But today’s progressives who believe global treaties and central planning will stop climate change, and inspire China to stop polluting, are wrong on the politics and policy. Just ask Bill Clinton.

In his 1992 Earth Day speech, then-candidate Clinton said, “I believe it is time for a new era in environmental protection, which uses the market to help us get our environment back on track—to recognize that Adam Smith’s invisible hand can have a green thumb.”

Sadly, many modern progressives prefer to use the climate debate to wage a proxy war against capitalism. They argue that the best way to combat climate change is through a “degrowth” agenda that seeks to decrease the economic activity that demands energy consumption. Proposals like the Green New Deal to advance unrelated socialist policies like government-run health care, free college, and universal basic income.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Epictitus

    I truly appreciate The Dispatch comment section where people see through Mr. Hart's weak arguments. I enjoyed reading the comments more than I enjoyed reading the piece. And I learned more from the comments. While Mr. Hart has some insights buried in this piece, his line of reasoning is so filled with innuendo and name calling that he failed to make or support a point.

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  2. Shaybult

    "free economies are twice as clean as unfree economies"

    Correlation, with no evidence of causation. I don't even see anything here about analyzing the data in a way that controls for other potentially relevant variables. (I didn't read the actual report, just the article.)

    Please don't try to use "a study" as evidence of the point you want to make when that study is (at least as described here) without any intellectual rigor.

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      Epictitus

      Worse yet, he is simply confusing causation. What he calls "free economies" are capitalist economies that have a strong and predictable rule of law. It is the rule of law and the voice of citizens that have lead to cleaner economies as pointed out in other comments: removing lead from gasoline, classifying certain toxic wastes as "hazardous waste" and requiring additional management under RCRA, removing NOx, SOx, PM from stack emissions, removing VOCs from air emissions - these all occurred because of a solid rule of law.
      These changes can be prohibitions (e.g. ozone destroying chlorofluorocarbons under Reagan) or regulations (RCRA, CAA, CWA) or market based like some emissions trading schemes which have worked. But they all are driven by a solid, predictable rule of law in countries where citizens have a voice.
      So if people take a lesson from Mr. Hart's piece, I hope it is seeing how people can distort causation and how the rule of law is required for a solid market to operate - along with laws that protect people from externalities like pollution.

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      1. Shaybult

        I don't have an informed opinion on what the actual causation is (and of course it's really unlikely that it's only one thing). Your theory sounds plausible to me, but maybe you're wrong - without more data, I have no idea. But the fact that the author didn't even address the possibility of these other potentially causational factors is disappointing.

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    Mudskipper

    More articles like this one and we will have a serious shortage of straw on our hands.

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    Ed P

    Its almost as if the author believes Biden and liberal Americans want to take the USA in the direction of China/Venezuela rather than Northern Europe (which is immaculately clean and sporting some of the most economically free nations of the world).

    Of course, freer nations produce a middle class that has bellies full enough, and time off work enough to demand a clean environment. The environmental work is almost entirely accomplished by regulation.

    The innuendo here is atrocious. Do you actually believe liberals want to become China and Venezuala, Mr Hart, or are you trying to use insincere arguments to make a point?

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    Rajeev

    "The Left's Free Stuff Agenda"

    I would think that a serious article in the Dispatch wouldn't be so cavalier about using such terms without some sort of justification particularly when you juxtapose their policies so far under the Biden administration with those of the previous 4 years.

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    TJ

    Conservation and environmental concern? Yes. Climate policies reducing carbon emissions? That should be last on the “To Do List”

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  7. Fudrock

    This article is arguing in bad faith by taking a lot of rhetorical shortcuts along the way. I generally agree with your premise, but not your reasons or conclusions. In a wealthy society that is receptive and beholden to the public will, the downsides to the most egregious forms of pollution by industrial actors are self-evident and are corrected when the public asserts itself, either economically or politically. I, like you, prefer to live in a society where this is possible.

    However, even the most rabid members of the DSM don't look to Venezuela, a failing authoritarian petrostate, as a good way to run a railroad. Similarly, calling back to the Soviet Union and Chernobyl is equally disingenuous, given that we've lorded over many of our own environmental and nuclear disasters, and learned from them (and others, Chernobyl included). Venezuelas problems are myriad, and don't track well with the United States on any empirical level.

    https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis

    Venezuela is the best contemporary example of a command economy and socialism at its worst, so it's a convenient foil, if your core argument is that the policy proposals of progressives are a relentless and heedless march to Caracasville. The Green New Deal, as it stands, is a vague moonshot proposal designed to move the Overton window. It has virtually no chance of becoming law and were it to remove the unrelated socialist giveaways (in the form of job guarantees, "fair" competition, affordable housing, etc.) you still wouldn't support it, because massive public investment in green energy initiatives will inevitably disrupt the energy market -- some argue necessarily, some, especially those with a vested interest in the current energy economy, argue emphatically against it.

    https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf

    If I had a dollar for every stupid messaging bill passed by both parties in the House, I could retire. That said, public investment at scale in green energy and nuclear (deal with it, progs) will generally go to private actors. A lot of those funds will be squandered, no doubt, and some of it will finance failures or cronyism (Solyndra!), but most of it will succeed at decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, which the lion's share of available evidence deems necessary, by bolstering technologies that simply emit less of them, hopefully at a rate that forestalls the worst effects of climate change. Democrats in favor of this need to reckon with the disproportional harm this will do to energy producing states (and nations) and direct their well-honed empathy to those populations.

    Side note: Next time you introduce a claim about Trump's exemplary environmental record, as supported by a drop in emissions from 2018 (one of the worst increases in the last 30 years) to 2019, try not to quote yourself in an article that's equally short on context, and stop short of giving Trump credit for a trend away from coal to natural gas (thanks, Free Market!) that preceded him by a decade, especially as he stumped relentlessly for bringing coal back to its former prominence. Pleased to see he failed at this. More context at the links below:

    https://rhg.com/research/preliminary-us-emissions-2019/

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-co2-emissions-were-flat-in-2019-but-dont-cheer-yet/

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  8. Avatar photo
    DougAz

    Sir, their is onky one reason why free democracies like the US, Japan and Western Europe are cleaner than state controlled economies.

    Regulations.

    The citizens through their policies enacted by governing democratic institutions set Environmental goals for Cleaner Water, Cleaner Air, toxic material bans for Industry to achieve or have economic penalties.

    Oligarchs don't have Regulations.

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      Luke Sherman

      Regulations as the monocausal explanation is a rather reductive was to approach this.
      Regulations are part of the story and can be considered a driver, but there is also the fact that there have been free market incentives for organizations to run cleaner. The generation of good PR, the ability to make more from less, and all kinds of other small incentives that encourage our businesses today to operate in a more environmentally conscious way today.

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        DougAz

        Well actually sir, no.

        Before regulations on toxic materials, clean air and water from the 1970 era, I refer you to the truthful environmental record previous to regulation.

        A. Johns Manville knew about the mesothelioma in the 1930s and killed thousands of asbestos workers or damaged and shortened lives.

        B DuPont knew in the early 1960s about the cancer and mutagenic effects of PFOA, a flourine oligimer created from making Teflon. They experimented on their workers including pregnant women giving birth defects.

        C. Legislation was required to remove lead from gasoline.

        Today, there are many Corporations that do positively embrace environmental actions, and see climate change and meeting regulations thereof as a great business opportunity.

        PR about the environmental stance of a company is cheap nothingness. Those who take action can be applauded.

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          Jason Gibson

          And that’s the only solution? Mr Henderson below makes a good case and I’m afraid demonstrates again that the left is just too tied to old solutions from the previous century

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            DougAz

            You missed that I liked them 👋

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          Rick Henderson

          I don't have the citations nearby, but your premise was correct ... at first. Initially, it took regulations and the threat of lawsuits to get companies to cut pollution, remove lead, reduce spillage, etc. Businesses didn't see the benefit or the cost until the cost was imposed on them. The early regulations and lawsuits did a lot of good in a hurry, because there was so much junk to clean up (getting the low-hanging fruit, as it were). Once you got rid of, say, 85-90% of the problem, the cost of getting the last 10-15% with regulations goes up exponentially. That's where incentives (including fees, taxes, and processes like taking land out of circulation -- as the Nature Conservancy does) make more environmental and financial sense.

          You're also correct that environmental stewardship is seen as a public and PR good, so companies that can do so without becoming uncompetitive are embracing it because their customers demand it.

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            Paul Reichardt

            Much to agree with here. One obvious counterargument however is when multinational energy extractors / exporters are operating in places out-of-sight from the American public, such as the Ecuador spills from the 90's with Texaco/Chevron.

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            DougAz

            Thanks Rick

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            Rick Henderson

            In a command economy, consumers have little power and fewer choices, so it takes a market economy (even a mixed one like ours) to make these incentives work.

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    2. Dylan Paul

      Oligarchs are the regulations.

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