Coyote Blog

Originally, the environmental movement counted many in its leadership with scientific backgrounds who were thoughtful advocates of improving the environment.  Unlike many "conservatives", as a libertarian that thinks more about being for property rights rather than just "pro-business", I understand that emissions guidelines are critical to the proper functioning of free markets:

In fact, environmental laws are as critical to a nation with strong
property rights as is contract law. Why? Imagine a world without any
environmental legislation but with strong property rights. What happens
when the first molecule of smoke from my iron furnace or from my farm
tractor crosses over on to your land. I have violated your property
rights, have I not, by sending unwanted substances onto your land, into
your water, or into your airspace. To stop me, you might sue me. And so
might the next guy downwind, etc. We would end up in an economic
gridlock with everyone slapping injunctions on each other. Since
economic activity is almost impossible without impacting surrounding
property owners, at least in small ways, we need a framework for
setting out maximums for this impact - e.g., environmental legislation.

Unfortunately, while many thoughtful people still call themselves an environmentalist, reasonable and scientific people no longer run the environmental movement.  Increasingly, the environmental movement has been taken over by
anti-growth and anti-technology Luddites as well as anti-free-market
socialists.

As evidence, I offer what has become an effective thirty-year moratorium on refinery construction. Forget for this post the obvious effect this has on gasoline supply stability, particularly with the EPA-mandated proliferation of special local gasoline blends.  Think instead about the true environmental implication:

The opposition to building new refineries ignores the dramatic
technological improvements that have been made since an oil refinery
was last constructed here in 1976. New, clean refineries emit far less
pollution than older refineries, with new scrubbers and design changes
that dramatically reduce sulfur and other emissions. And at the same
time our ability to model and map emission characteristics and
distribution lets us choose the best locations for new facilities "“
where they will have the least possible impact on people and the
environment.

Refineries are dirty places.  There are thousands of seals and flanges and safety valves that are going to leak some hydrocarbons.  But think on this:  Every single refinery in this country was built with at least 30 year old technology.  Sure there have been upgrades, but much of the core is still there.  I was an engineer at a refinery near Houston for 3 years and we had equipment still operating that was 50 years old, and that was twenty years ago and much of it is still there.

So what does this mean?  Imagine if every car in this country was over 30 years old.  Think of the improvements we have made in fuel efficiency and pollution control over the last 30 years- no cars would possess any of this technology.  The roads are full of cars with modern technology that are fuel efficient and relatively clean because we don't moronically prevent them from being replaced with new ones.

But this is exactly the case with refineries.  The single best, most intelligent thing we could do today for the environment, as far as refineries are concerned, is to let about 10 brand new ones be built with all modern technology, and let these newer refineries compete the older ones into closure.  And who is blocking this single most impactfull environmental step?  Environmentalists, of course.

This is not an unusual issue. I wrote about this same issue with new source review rules and Bush's Clear Skies initiative:

New source review is long and complicated, but basically
says that existing power plants don't have to upgrade to new
technologies, but new ones have to go through a very extensive
environmental review and permitting process and have a suite of
government mandated pollution control technologies installed.  OK, that
has all been clear for 3+ decades.  The rub comes when a company
considers upgrading or replacing a portion of a power plant.
For most of the life of the Clean Air Act, the government allowed
utilities to upgrade and modernize plants without having to install the
expensive suite of new controls.  The Clinton administration clamped
down on this, making it harder to upgrade existing plants.  All the
recent hullabaloo has occurred as GWB proposed to go back to the
pre-Clinton rules.

This issue is a great test for environmentalists, because
it separates them into those who really understand the issues and the
science and legitimately want improvement, and those who care more
about symbolism and politics.  Those who like symbolism have cast this
move as a roll-back, and are fighting it tooth and nail.  Those who
care about results know the following:

Experience under the Clinton rules has shown that most old
plants will never be upgraded if they have to go through the planning
process and install the new scrubbing and other technologies.  So, they
will just keep running inefficiently, as-is, until they are finally
shut down.  However, if allowed to be upgraded without review and new
scrubbers, etc., they will become much more efficient.  No, they won't
have the most modern scrubbing technology, but because they are more
efficient, they burn less fuel (coal) to make the same amount of
electricity and therefore will pollute less.  In some cases these rules
even prevent switching to cleaner fuels like natural gas. 

In other words, most scientists, including
scientific-oriented environmentalists, agree that GWB's proposal will
result in less pollution, but environmentalists still oppose it because
they don't like the symbolism of any pollution regulation appearing to
be rolled back.  You can read a lot more about New Source Review and how it actually increases pollution in practice here.

Technorati Tags:  Environment, Economics

Last week I wrote that I was confused on this diversity thing:

For years, women at Harvard argued there needed to be more women on the
faculty to support "diversity".  I have always thought that diversity
meant that you had a lot of difference - in this case different kinds
of people with different skills.  Now, Larry Summers is getting
attacked by the female faculty for implying that women are, uhh,
perhaps different from men.  Women are insisting that there is no
justification for even studying the question of whether women are different than men.  They maintain that women are the same, no argument allowed.  But if they are the same, how is hiring more women contributing to diversity?

Fortunately, hat tip to James Taranto, the diversity term is clarified on the web site of an Oregon lodge.  The page begins:

WE WELCOME DIVERSITY
Respecting the interdependence & diversity of all life.

Helpfully, they clarify what they mean by diversity a bit down the page:

No Smokers...No Pets...No Visitors...No Hummers, No RVs, No Bush Voters (due to his environmental destructive policies.)

Oh, and in the spirit of good customer service: no refunds for cancellations.

It can't be long before this same text appears on the Harvard web site.

PS- I would be curious to see a quality, thoughtful listing of GWB's war-crimes on the environment.  Not his "lack of commitment", but actual changes in regulation.  While I know environmentalists hate his rhetoric, in reality, he has not actually changed much, other than the Clear Skies Initiative, which I discussed here as actually reducing emissions.  Heck, he's actually a disappointment for those of us who would like to see a roll-back of some of the sillier environmental rules (e.g. ANWR drilling).

Presumably environmentalists dislike GWB's going along with the Senate's 98-0 rejection of Kyoto, but does this reaction really make sense for minimize-man's-impact-on-nature people like those quoted above?  Global warming hasn't been shown to hurt plants or animals or such - I am not sure many would notice.  Global warming primarily impacts man, and in particular, technological high-population-density coast-living man.  I would think that rising oceans swamping out civilization would be a positive outcome for these folks.  (update: more on Clear Skies here at Volokh)

Via the Commons, the story of how the Clear Skies initiative came off the rails, despite the fact it was initially seen as a win-win for both environmentalists and industry.  I don't know all the issues on the table, but I like the cap-and-trade concept for pollution control. 

Many folks, by the way, automatically assume that as a libertarian, I am automatically against pollution laws.  This is not the case.  In fact, this issue is a good example of how a thoughtful understanding of individual rights and property rights differs from just being blindly "pro-business".  In fact, pollution laws are nearly essential to strong property rights.  As I wrote then:

In fact, environmental laws are as critical to a nation with strong property rights as is contract law. Why? Imagine a world without any environmental legislation but with strong property rights. What happens when the first molecule of smoke from my iron furnace or from my farm tractor crosses over on to your land. I have violated your property rights, have I not, by sending unwanted substances onto your land, into your water, or into your airspace. To stop me, you might sue me. And so might the next guy downwind, etc. We would end up in an economic gridlock with everyone slapping injunctions on each other. Since economic activity is almost impossible without impacting surrounding property owners, at least in small ways, we need a framework for setting out maximums for this impact - e.g., environmental legislation.

Cap and trade strike me as the best, most free market way to limit pollution - this system shifts the burden of pollution control to the people and industries and technologies that can do it the cheapest.  Unfortunately, many environmentalists are command and control technocrats and/or socialists who greatly prefer having government micro-manage technology choices and industry by industry requirements.  Which is exactly what led to the problems referred to in the article around "new source review".

New source review is long and complicated, but basically says that existing power plants don't have to upgrade to new technologies, but new ones have to go through a very extensive environmental review and permitting process and have a suite of government mandated pollution control technologies installed.  OK, that has all been clear for 3+ decades.  The rub comes when a company considers upgrading or replacing a portion of a power plant.  For most of the life of the Clean Air Act, the government allowed utilities to upgrade and modernize plants without having to install the expensive suite of new controls.  The Clinton administration clamped down on this, making it harder to upgrade existing plants.  All the recent hullabaloo has occurred as GWB proposed to go back to the pre-Clinton rules.

This issue is a great test for environmentalists, because it separates them into those who really understand the issues and the science and legitimately want improvement, and those who care more about symbolism and politics.  Those who like symbolism have cast this move as a roll-back, and are fighting it tooth and nail.  Those who care about results know the following:

Experience under the Clinton rules has shown that most old plants will never be upgraded if they have to go through the planning process and install the new scrubbing and other technologies.  So, they will just keep running inefficiently, as-is, until they are finally shut down.  However, if allowed to be upgraded without review and new scrubbers, etc., they will become much more efficient.  No, they won't have the most modern scrubbing technology, but because they are more efficient, they burn less fuel (coal) to make the same amount of electricity and therefore will pollute less.  In some cases these rules even prevent switching to cleaner fuels like natural gas. 

In other words, most scientists, including scientific-oriented environmentalists, agree that GWB's proposal will result in less pollution, but environmentalists still oppose it because they don't like the symbolism of any pollution regulation appearing to be rolled back.  You can read a lot more about New Source Review and how it actually increases pollution in practice here.