Sometimes it's better to do nothing, particularly when it comes to expensive federal programs which pollute the environment.
Washington spends billions each year on subsidies, guarantees and wasteful programs which cause pollution -- and then require more expensive programs to rectify the damage done by the original programs. For example:
Subsidizing recreation on government lands leads to wear and tear on trails and parks, and -- without adequate user fees -- passes the costs back to taxpayers.
Yet another example is the Animal Damage Control Program:
There is also the federal "Clean Coal" program, which has spent over $1.1 billion since 1986 -- without yielding any significant environmental gains.
Environmental groups estimate that just by eliminating these and other such programs, the federal government could save $40 billion a year.
Source: Jonathan H. Adler (Competitive Enterprise Institute), "Green Budget-Cutting," Investor's Business Daily, March 1, 1996.
If the federal government were truly serious about restoring the Florida Everglades, it would remove sugar import restrictions, according to some experts.
By forcing up prices, the government encourages the domestic sugar industry to grow far more than it would under free market conditions. So, to increase yields, sugar farmers overuse fertilizers -- which drain into the Everglades.
Elimination of the import restrictions could reduce acreage usage to 1981 levels, which would restore 166,000 acres of wetlands -- 25,000 more than the administration has proposed.
Source: Michael Fumento (Reason magazine), "Sugar Vs. The Everglades," Investor's Business Daily, March 5, 1996.
Since satellite data over the last 25 years show no trend toward increasing global temperatures, supporters of the theory that greenhouse gases (principally CO2) released by human activity are causing climate change are seeking evidence elsewhere.
Increased rainfall caused by increased evaporation of water caused by higher temperatures is one place they are looking. According to Vice President Albert Gore, "Torrential rains have increased in the summer during agricultural growing seasons."
In addition, contradictory evidence is provided by reported data on water evaporation rates from 936 measuring stations around the U.S. Although other factors besides temperature effect evaporation, the claimed increase in rainfall is supposed to be the result of increased evaporation.
Yet measurements from pans that collect precipitation at these stations show that evaporation rates have actually fluctuated downward during the last 50 years, which is more consistent with the slight global cooling shown by the satellite data.
Source: "Rainfall," Access to Energy, February 1996.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed new regulations last year that may make disinfecting public water supplies less effective and even cost prohibitive, according to many local public health officials. And a provision of a Senate bill would exempt the EPA from the requirement that the regulations be justified by a cost-benefit analysis.
Every day, 25,000 people in developing countries die from such water-borne diseases as cholera and typhoid fever because public water supplies are not disinfected. Chlorine compounds have been used to disinfect water in the U.S. and other countries for nearly 100 years, resulting in the elimination of many diseases.
However, when chlorine combines with other organic compounds in water treatment facilities, such as decomposing leaves, "disinfection by-products" such as chloroform are formed. The health effects of these by-products in minute quantities are largely unknown, but the EPA wants to eliminate them because of a hypothetical risk of cancer.
Requiring federal regulatory agencies to justify proposed rules by conducting cost-benefit analyses is one way of reducing the cost of federal regulations. However, the Senate version of a bill reauthorizing the Safe Drinking Water Act would exempt the EPA's proposed rule from meeting such a standard.
Sources: "Controversial Disinfectants/Disinfection By-Products Rule Clouds Future of SDWA in House," EPA Watch, Vol. 5, No.1, January 15, 1996; and "The Safe Drinking Water Act: A Case Study of an Unfunded Federal Mandate," Congressional Budget Office, September 1995, Washington, DC.
Doomsday theorists still claim the "spaceship earth" is running out of natural resources -- including metals and minerals, energy supplies and food -- and the growing human population is using them up at an accelerating rate.
Yet usable resources are becoming more abundant, as indicated by their relative prices. Relative to wages, 1990 prices for all natural resources in the United States were only one-half what they were in 1950 and just one-fifth the 1900 price.
Mineral resources show a similar price decline: an index of 13 important metals and minerals show a net decline of 31 percent in real prices from 1980 to 1990.
Energy prices have also fallen:
Similarly, world food prices in real terms are falling as agricultural resources increase. One agronomist estimated that if the arable non-tropical land in the less developed nations of Africa, Asia and South America were farmed more efficiently:
And the supply of arable land is increasing, since biotechnology is creating plants that grow in dry climates or acid soils or can be irrigated with seawater.
No-growth advocates err in treating resources as finite materials, whereas innovation continuously makes new resources usable and extracts more services from them.
Source: Thomas Lambert, "Defusing the 'Population Bomb' With Free Markets," Policy Study No. 129. February 1996, Center for the Study of American Business, Washington University, Campus Box 1208, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, (314) 935-5630.
Even though the "global warming" topic is cooling off in serious debate, activists, politicians and some scientists have acquired a vested interest in forecasting a climate catastrophe.
Critics say such waste is bad enough, but more alarming is that the measures being considered would certainly stifle economic growth and reduce living standards for a large part of the global population.
Now a "Second Assessment" report of the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been released, and greeted with skepticism and criticism.
The report is being questioned for several reasons.
Source: S. Fred Singer (University of Virginia and Science and Environmental Policy Project), "Rays of a Setting Global Warming Sun," Washington Times, March 21, 1996.
It is not all that uncommon in Washington for a department or agency to give funds to private, nonprofit groups, which then spend the money to advocate and lobby for more funds for the granting agency. It is a merry-go-round paid for by the taxpayers, which some find disturbing to outrageous.
One of the most egregious agencies practicing this sort of scam is the Environmental Protection Agency, where tens of millions of dollars over the past several years have been channeled to nongovernmental organizations directly involved in political advocacy.
NRDC has published numerous reports attacking Republican efforts to limit the regulatory power of the EPA.
The independence of nonpartisan organizations can be undermined when they are enlisted as allies using EPA funds.
Source: Jonathan H. Adler (Competitive enterprise Institute), "Environmental Protection Payoffs," Washington Times, March 24, 1996.
Despite spending more than $30 billion over 15 years, the federal "Superfund" program has failed. Among the most tragic aspects of its failure has been the creation of "brownfields" -- once productive commercial sites now abandoned due to the suspicion that they contain toxic waste and thus carry the burden of Superfund liability.
Brownfield redevelopment should appeal to community leaders interested in increasing tax revenues and employment; to environmentalists wanting to preserve current greenfields and clean up existing contaminated sites; and to brownfield site owners wanting to turn potential liabilities into assets.
Two Congressional committees are considering Superfund reauthorization, but three reforms must be accomplished first:
Also, Congress should do away with Superfund's retroactive liability -- which holds someone liable after the fact for doing something that was legal at the time. The Constitution bars this approach in criminal cases, and civil law should recognize the same standard.
These three reforms would contribute to quicker, less costly brownfield redevelopment -- getting brownfield sites back on the tax rolls, increasing inner-city employment, reducing urban sprawl and safeguarding citizens' health.
Source: Sterling Burnett (National Center for Policy Analysis), "Revitalize Cities Via Superfund?" Washington Times, March 27, 1996.
Superfund was conceived as a short-term project in 1980 -- $1.6 billion over five years to clean up some 400 sites -- but has mushroomed into one of the nation's largest public works projects, having spent $30 billion on the uncompleted task of cleaning up 1,300 sites.
An economist who has analyzed the occupational hazards of environmental cleanup concludes that the risk of fatality to the average worker at a Superfund cleanup site is considerably larger than the cancer risks to individual residents that might result from exposure to the sites.
According to the study, regulators must balance the risks to different groups, but the official records of decisions at many Superfund sites do not even mention the possibility of dangers to cleanup workers.
Source: Henry I. Miller (Hoover Institution), "Fatal Sanitation," FYI, February 28, 1996, American Legislative Exchange Council, 910 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, (202) 466-3800.