A fascinating article that shares a wealth of market-based conservation solutions.
PERC - A Different Shade of Green
The contemporary dialogue surrounding environmentalism is almost always stubbornly fixated on energy austerity or blanket regulation, so it is exciting to see some of the progress being made by more creative organizations.
Some of the topics covered:
*Ocean fisheries and rights-based solutions to overfishing
*Markets and scarce water resources
*The role of private lands in wildlife conservation
*Weaknesses of the Endangered Species Act
An excerpt from President Sebastián Piñera's speech to assembled Chile Vamos delegates, July 17th, 2019.
“General Augusto Pinochet, despite his numerous sins and wrongdoings, put Chile onto the pathway to prosperity in the 1980s when he set us on the neoliberal path. Our economy, once a floundering third-world one struggling to feed our people and heat our homes, is now a proud member of the OECD, one of the world’s richest and the wealthiest nation in South America."
"Development is not free, nor is it easy. Nations which industrialise do so at often great cost to the environment and biosphere. It’s not true, you say? Then tell me - how many Yangtze dolphins are left? How many North American bison? How many have died due to air pollution in the great metropoles of Europe? Even in our own lands, look at what has become of our mountains - many of them have been destroyed in pursuit of their riches. Our beaches are polluted as runoff from power plants flows freely into the sea."
"I hear you, assembled delegates, when you scoff and call out - “the environment is not a conservative issue!”. This is the heart of the problem. You and I, well, we have never addressed the issue of environmental protection before. As free-market neoliberals, we scoffed at overreach attempts by the governing leftists and proclaimed that the market would suffer - and so our people would suffer."
"Well, my dear friends, the day of reckoning is upon us. We are in power now! We can no longer simply point the finger! We must take a stand for our beautiful land, to save it from the base desires of humanity to destroy and plunder. “How?” How, you ask? I will tell you! I am proud to announce the next phase of neoliberalism - eco-neoliberalism!"
"In days gone by, natural phenomena have been under the protection of CONAF, our forestries commission, but their rangers are increasingly toothless in the face of human ingenuity at extracting profits. Our rangers, therefore, will be endowed with authority under the most fundamental right of all those enforced by our government - the right to be free from aggression, or the Non-Aggression Principle."
The Chilean Government will ensure the protection of our rivers, national parks and seas by the following measures:
"Each National Park, and each Natural Monument, will be legally recognised as a sovereign citizen of the Republic of Chile, with all rights and obligations thus imparted and assumed under the laws of nature."
... keep reading on reddit ➡The Property & Environment Research Center (PERC) - located in Bozeman, MT, less than 100 miles from the Yellowstone River - describes itself as "the nation’s oldest and largest institute dedicated to improving environmental quality through property rights and markets" and a place "where scholars documented how government regulation and bureaucracy have led to environmental degradation." Ok, so you get the idea of what they're about.
I would think they might have something to say about the oil spill by a private corporate entity in their backyard, where an Exxon pipeline leaked into the Yellowstone River.
Here's their news page: http://www.perc.org/inthenews.php
Latest entry, as of now:
May 2011:
"In Namibia the people own the wildlife. Their system of community-based conservation has providedincome to local people and sharply increased key wildlife populations...."
They also have some older entries about someone on FoxNews and on WorldNetDaily.
I can't wait to read their report on the Yellowstone River oil leak, though!
