Eco-nomics: What Everyone Should Know About Economics and the Environment.

by Richard L. Stroup

It's one thing to be passionate about protecting the environment. It's another to be successful at it. In this book, Stroup expains why many of our environmental laws have failed us and how we might go about doing a better job protecting nature.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Environment

100 pages, Paperback

First published March 20, 2003

Reviews

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

This concisely counter-balances the prevailing alarmist views that posit only through government regulation can we prevent an environmental melt down. Stroup begins by laying a foundation of key economic principles, such as the power of market forces when profit and loss matter. I was already familiar with the economics and the climate debate. What I valued as new context was the history of the environmental movement and how both private companies and the Audubon Society have used the economic self-interests of diverse stakeholders to protect the environment.

[Burak Sumer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liberté yayınları tarafından yaptırılan çevirisi berbat. Çeviriler sanki kelime kelime yapılmış gibi. Aklımda kalan rezaletlerden biri "last three decades"'in "son üç on yıl" olarak çevrilmiş olması. Lisan bilenlerin orijinalini okuması daha iyi olur kanaatindeyim.

[Foster · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Cato Institute, publisher of this book, would probably not be placed high on any list of environmentally friendly think-tanks, but it's healthy to check out what the other side is thinking from time-to-time.

Stroup is a senior fellow at PERC, a libertarian policy institute focused on natural resource issues. I had actually considered applying for a fellowship there once, but I think that was more because they are located in Bozeman, Montana - near some of the best trout fishing in the world!

Stroup lays out "principles and examples" to explain why environmental laws "end up costing a lot of money, often creating large government bureaucracies that can't seem to achieve the goals that seemed within reach when the agency was formed or the law was passed."

Most of the principles are straight from a typical intro macroeconomics text (the book is intended for undergrad courses in environmental economics), which is fine - but a lot of the examples are anecdotal, and many are just wrong. That said, there were some interesting points in the book that got me thinking about further research possibilities:

* A study by Coursey is cited to point out that environmental protection is strongly linked with national income. This is widely accepted already, and always reminds me of the difficulty we face in managing the growth of the developing world. Western countries destroyed many of their ecosystems during the industrial revolution so they could get rich, and only then began to think about protecting the environment. If only we could figure out a way to swap that progression in other parts of the world, or at least do it simultaneously.
* Stroup also knocks the EPA for not doing enough to monitor the environment. That is another fair point, one that the EPA has been criticised for before. However, Stroup fails to mention that most environmental monitoring is now done by smaller organizations that monitor pollution in their local areas. A good example is the Arroyo Seco Streamteam. Generally, these groups hold the regional pollution authority accountable to their data, for instance suing the relevant state agency to enforce environmental laws based on their findings of pollution. Stroup doesn't even mention that this exists.
* The Economic Freedom of the World index is used to show that governments in countries with higher economic freedom are just better - more competent - leading to higher agricultural productivity and more environmental protection. While this is an interesting concept, I go back to my previous argument that this is a chicken-and-egg problem: wealth came first, then environmental protections. Somewhere in that evolution came economic freedom. What would be more convincing is a regression analysis of a group of likely candidates for increase agricultural and economic productivity, environmental quality, and life expectancy, and see if economic freedom/property rights comes out on top as the best predictor.
* I've saved Stroup's most sickening claim for last. He says that "Scientists, called upon to evaluate the danger from a particular environmental concern, can be expected to focus attention on the most troublesome future scenarios that they can reasonably project." He attributes this to "funding, it helps immensely to have the public (and thus Congress and potential private funders) worried about the critical nature of the problem being studied." Well, have you ever heard about the review process?? The difficulty of getting an unsubstantiated claim into a respected journal is so overwhelming, it actually dampens scientists "chicken little" behavior. Witness the current debate on climate change for evidence.

So, that's my review of Eco-nomics. Some decent points to be aware of, but tarnished by some irresponsibly one-sided claims.

[Sean Rosenthal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting Quote:

"After 1989...the income differences [of the Soviet Union and the west] were obvious. So, too, were the differences in the environment. Newspapers and magazines began reporting shocking examples, from drinking water seriously contaminated with arsenic in Hungary to pollution of irrigation water by heavy metals in Bulgaria...The same lack of privately enforceable rights against harms, invasions, and takings--the lack of private property rights--that led to lower incomes and slower growth also led to far greater environmental pollution."

-Richard Stroup, Eco-nomics

[Beth Haynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short but powerful discussion comparing economic to political solutions to environmental problems.