Let us now deal with the ‘conservation’, as opposed to
the pollution, side of environmentalism. By ‘conservation’, environmentalists
typically mean attempts to prevent certain natural phenomena such as animal or
plant species or natural landscapes from being ‘destroyed’ by the actions of humans, or to protect natural resources from being depleted.
Unlike pollution, ‘conservation’ is a relatively simple issue to deal with via
a normal private property rights solution, as it exhibits no significant
negative economic externalities that are difficult to internalize. Essentially,
if enough people who have amassed enough means (money) want something to be
conserved, on a free-market it will indeed tend to be conserved for the sake of
these people. For instance, if a protected wildlife sanctuary/nature park that
is privately owned attracts a lot of paying customers or donors, keeping it as
such a sanctuary or park will probably be the most profitable use of it, and
hence entrepreneurs will tend to favour retaining it for that use. If however,
another sanctuary/park does not attract very many paying customers or donors,
it will tend to be converted by entrepreneurs into a more profitable use. The
environmentalist may object if this happens, but what right has he to impose
his value judgements on other people? If, for instance, the wilderness of a
park is cleared to make way for a series of potato farms, an entrepreneur has
demonstrated that he thinks the consumers will pay more for the potatoes than
they would for the land as a sanctuary/park. It is true that entrepreneurs are
not always correct in their decisions, but they will tend to try their hardest
to be because being correct results in monetary profits, while being incorrect
results in monetary losses.
The environmentalist may, if he
wishes, choose to become an entrepreneur with his own, donated, or borrowed
funds and buy the land and retain it as a sanctuary/park, and if he has exhibited
keen entrepreneurial judgement he may even make a profit on this transaction if
the consumers approve of his desired use of the land over others’. In most
cases though, the environmentalist complainer will make no such attempt, and
will instead try to convince the government to stop by force anyone who thinks
they can make better use of the land. In the process, the environmentalist will
usually denounce the vicious profit motive that could result in such outrages,
as for him, any change of land-use away from what he thinks is the best, but is not willing to pay enough for, is
indeed an outrage. Taking the broader view though, we see that this is all part
of the democracy of the market guided by consumer`s sovereignty, and that at
the end of the day, the people the environmentalist really is opposing are the
consumers who are predicted by the entrepreneur to derive more utility from the
land used as a potato farm over the land used as a sanctuary/park. On the
free-market, conservation that is desired by the consumers, demonstrated by
their purchasing or charitable decisions, will be tend to be effected, while
‘conservation’ that is not desired by the mass of consumers or some rich donors
but by a few environmentalists will not be. It is simply a conflict over
land-use and it is unclear why the desires of nosy environmentalists in this
respect should automatically override the desires of consumers and the owners
of the land in question who usually attempt to serve these same consumers in
the best way with their land.
Another worry of conservationists is
the depletion of natural resources through production. ‘Sustainable
Development’ is a trendy term nowadays, meaning economic development that uses
up as few natural resources as possible. The free market and private property,
however, are very well equipped to deal with this ‘problem’. Firstly, when a
natural resource becomes scarcer as it is depleted, its supply offered for sale
will go down and, other things equal, its market price will go up as a result.
Higher prices will induce producers and consumers to try to substitute other
resources for the scarce natural resources in question, as doing so will save
them money. Thus, as a natural resource becomes scarcer, the free-market,
through the price system, induces an automatic ‘rationing’ procedure for that
resource.
Secondly, as the price of a resource
goes up, entrepreneurs will be even more encouraged to try to find and bring to
market either substitutes for the natural resource in question or ways to make
more of the natural resource available for human use. Oil is a good example of
this. People have been worrying for a long time that oil would eventually be
depleted, but in response to the higher prices of oil, entrepreneurs have found
it profitable to try to develop alternative sources of energy and to look for
oil in tar sands and shale deposits with new techniques. The earth has so many
natural resources that humans haven’t even come close to being able to fully
exploit them (think of all the energy and minerals that lie deep in the earth’s
crust, and the potential energy from splitting atoms), and with advances in
space technology, perhaps we won’t even have to confine our search to the earth
itself. It is a pretty defeatist attitude and one not in line with the historical
path of humanity over the last 200 years to worry about depleting natural
resources and trying to ration them as a result at the expense of human
well-being.
Finally, environmentalists argue that
under capitalism, producers are encouraged to exploit natural resources as
quickly and as irresponsibly as possible, and by doing so, endanger the
material prospects of future generations of humanity. In response, firstly, how
can a private property society function if present owners are not given real ownership
of their land, but have to share it with some ghostly ‘future generations’ of
humanity? Who speaks for the desires of future generations? The usual answer is
the government, but this would just result in socialism, with all of the
problems that that entails. In fact, the institution of inheritance and the
family within a private property framework tends to result in people looking
out for the next generation at least, that generation looking out for the next,
etc… Secondly, it is not true that producers
are always incentivized to exploit natural resources as quickly as possible. If
they own the capital value of the land as well as its current production, they
will be encouraged to balance future use versus current income, and will
consult their own time horizons to make that choice. Unfortunately, presently
many natural resources and exploitable lands are owned by the government as
‘public lands’, and private companies are granted licences to exploit them. Of
course, in this case, producers are incentivized to maximize current production
and resource exploitation and not care about what happens to the future use
value of the lands, because they are not the ones who own the capital value.
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