The Democracy Deficit of International Law
12 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, international economics, law and economics Tags: Democracy deficit, international economic law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international investment law, international law, international trade law
What would you spend $200 million on?
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in development economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, green rent seeking, overseas development assistance
Anti-GMO bingo
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, health economics Tags: Anti-Science left, Quacks
Anti-science Left alert: climate alarmists routinely reject the IPCC consensus
10 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: Anti-Science left, climate alarmists, conjecture and refutation, global warming, IPCC
The wisdom of Homer Simpson: peak oil, oil pollution and the price at the pump
09 Dec 2014 1 Comment
Anti-science Left alert: Biotech and global warming
09 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming, health economics Tags: Anti-Science left, biotechnology, climate alarmism, GMOs, Quacks
Good old days alert: the London smog that killed 12,000
07 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, technological progress Tags: air pollution, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
Climate Change Denial Bingo!
06 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, global warming
Climate alarmism and the low cost of the green economy
06 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming, Marxist economics Tags: climate alarmism, green rent seeking, low carbon economy, Robert Murphy
On the beneficial effects of climate change
05 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
The above figure is as it appears in the final, published version of Chapter 10 of the Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
via Richard Tol.
Environmental Law 101 | Richard Epstein
05 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, law and economics, liberalism, property rights, Richard Epstein Tags: environmental law, law of nuisance, Richard Epstein, tort law
Back in 1999, Richard Epstein wrote a great summary of what should be environmental law from an old common law perspective, from a classical liberal perspective, and a pragmatic economic libertarian perspective:
Stated bluntly, nothing in the theory of property rights says that my property is sacred while everybody else’s property is profane. That single constraint of parity among owners should lead every owner to think hard…
This recognition of the noxious uses of private property is the source of the common law of nuisance.
That law dates from medieval times, certainly by 1215, at the time of the Magna Carta. It is no new socialist or environmentalist creation for the twentieth century.
When the common law of nuisance restricts the noxious use of property, it benefits not only immediate neighbours but the larger community. If I enjoin pollution created by my neighbour, others will share in the reduction of pollution.
Simply by using private actions, we have built a system for environmental protection that goes a long way toward stopping the worst forms of pollution.
Epstein does not stop there. He recognises as he should that the common law of nuisance is not enough to stop all problems of pollution:
Yet before we leap for joy, we must recognize that private actions are not universally effective in curbing nuisances.
Sometimes pollution is widely diffused—waste can come from many tailpipes, not just one—so that no one can tell exactly whose pollution is causing what damage to which individuals.
Under those circumstances, private enforcement of nuisance law can no longer control pollution…
We do not change the substantive standards of right and wrong, but we do use state regulation to fill in the gaps in private enforcement.
Epstein then makes a plea for private covenants to deal with a great deal of the social frictions that arise in the suburbs:
But often when individuals worry about their local environments, they’re not particularly happy to treat the nuisance law, however enforced, as the upper bound of their personal protection.
They want (especially as their wealth increases) more by way of aesthetics and open spaces. Fortunately, our legal system has a way to accommodate these newer demands.
One of our most important land-use control devices is the system of covenants by which all the holders of neighbouring lands agree among themselves and for their successors in title
Covenants might work in Greenfields developments in modern cities. But they really doesn’t work in managing land use conflicts in the inner city where regulation is been used to substitute the covenants for many decades.
Epstein’s ideal for modern environmental law is:
In sum, the system of public and private enforcement of nuisances and public and private purchases of environmentally sensitive sites is the way that sound environmental policy should proceed.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments