Abstract
For most people, markets are the cause of environmental problems, not the solution. The very notion of free market environmentalism is an oxymoron. Even conservative thinkers who support free enterprise and free trade find themselves uncomfortable with the idea of letting unfettered markets determine how and when natural resources are used. Markets may work fine to produce shoes or software, but the environment is somehow different and is too precious to be thrown to bulls and bears on Wall Street.
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Notes
Donnella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: A Potomac Associates Book, New American Library, 1974), ix–x.
For a discussion of additional apocalyptic predictions, see Edith Efron, The Apocalyptics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), chapter 1.
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Lester R. Brown, “The Future of Growth,” in State of the World 1998, Lester R. Brown, project director (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), 16.
For an excellent antidote to the Worldwatch predictions, see Ronald Bailey, ed., Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000).
Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Sierra Club-Ballantine Books, 1968).
Sandra Postel, “Facing Water Scarcity,” in State of the World 1993, Lester R. Brown, project director (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 40.
Mikhail S. Bernstam, “Comparative Trends in Resource Use and Pollution in Market and Socialist Economies,” in The State of Humanity, ed. Julian Simon (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 503–22.
Randal O’Toole, “Learning the Lessons of the 1980s,” Forest Watch 10 ( January–February 1990): 6.
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© 2001 Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal
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Anderson, T.L., Leal, D.R. (2001). Visions of the Environment. In: Free Market Environmentalism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299736_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299736_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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