Ron Paul's free, green market

The libertarian presidential contender says laissez-faire policies could stop global warming and save the planet.

By Amanda Griscom Little

Read more: Environment, Politics, Pollution, News, Global Warming, 2008 election, ron paul, 2008 Energy Interviews

Nov. 29, 2007 | Enviros may roll their eyes at a candidate who dismisses the U.S. EPA as feckless and disposable, who believes all public lands should be privately owned, and whose remedy for an ailing planet is "a free-market system and a lot less government." But Ron Paul, the quixotic libertarian U.S. rep from Texas, has a bigger cult following online than any other presidential candidate, and has won unexpected attention in the GOP debates with his provocative ideas.

Some of those ideas arguably have environmental merit. Paul is known for his zealous opposition to the Iraq war, which he duly notes causes pollution and the "burning of fuel for no good purpose." He wants to yank all subsidies and R&D funding from the energy sector, which many believe would benefit the growth of renewables. A cyclist himself, he has cosponsored bills that would offer tax breaks to Americans who commute by bicycle and use public transportation. Still, his libertarian presidency would, among other things, allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, boost the use of coal, and embrace nuclear power. Moreover, it wouldn't do diddly about global warming because, Paul reasons, "we're not going to be very good at regulating the weather."

I called Paul up on the campaign trail in Iowa to get the skinny on how the environment figures into his small-government agenda.

For more info on his platform and record, check out this Paul fact sheet.

What makes you the strongest candidate on energy and the environment?

On energy, I would say that the reliance on the government to devise a policy is a fallacy. I would advocate that the free market take care of that. The government shouldn't be directing research and development because they are bound and determined to always misdirect money to political cronies. The government ends up subsidizing things like the corn industry to develop ethanol and it turns out that it's not economically feasible. So, my answer to energy is to let the market work. Let supply and demand make the decision. Let prices make the decision. That is completely different than the bureaucratic and cronyism approach.

On environment, governments don't have a good reputation for doing a good job protecting the environment. If you look at the extreme of socialism or communism, they were very poor environmentalists. Private property owners have a much better record of taking care of the environment. If you look at the common ownership of the lands in the West, they're much more poorly treated than those that are privately owned. In a free-market system, nobody is permitted to pollute their neighbor's private property -- water, air, or land. It is very strict.

But there are realms of the environment that, by definition, can't be owned, right? How would you divide the sky or the sea into private parcels?

The air can certainly be identified. If you have a mill next door to me, you don't have a right to pollute my air -- that can be properly defined by property rights. Water: if you're on a river you certainly can define it, if you're on a lake you certainly can define it. Even oceans can be defined by international agreements. You can be very strict with it. If it is air that crosses a boundary between Canada and the United States, you would have to have two governments come together, voluntarily solving these problems.

Can you elaborate on when government intervention is and isn't appropriate?

Certainly, any time there's injury to another person, another person's land, or another person's environment, there's [legal] recourse with the government.

What do you see as the role of the Environmental Protection Agency?

You wouldn't need it. Environmental protection in the U.S. should function according to the same premise as "prior restraint" in a newspaper. Newspapers can't print anything that's a lie. There has to be recourse. But you don't invite the government in to review every single thing that the print media does with the assumption they might do something wrong. The EPA assumes you might do something wrong; it's a bureaucratic, intrusive approach and it favors those who have political connections.

Would you dissolve the EPA?

It's not high on my agenda. I'm trying to stop the war, and bring back a sound economy, and solve the financial crises, and balance the budget.

Is it appropriate for the government to regulate toxic or dangerous materials, like lead in children's toys?

If a toy company is doing something dangerous, they're liable and they should be held responsible. The government should hold them responsible, but not be the inspector. The government can't inspect every single toy that comes into the country.

So you see it as the legal system that brings about environmental protection?

Right. Some of this stuff can be handled locally with a government. I was raised in the city of Pittsburgh. It was the filthiest city in the country because it was a steel town. You couldn't even see the sun on a sunny day. Then it was cleaned up -- not by the EPA, by local authorities that said you don't have a right to pollute -- and the government cleaned it up and the city's a beautiful city. You don't need this huge bureaucracy that's remote from the problem. Pittsburgh dealt with it in a local fashion and it worked out quite well.

What if you're part of a community that's getting dumped on, but you don't have the time or the money to sue the offending polluter?

Imagine that everyone living in one suburb, rather than using regular trash service, were taking their household trash to the next town over and simply tossing it in the yards of those living in the nearby town. Is there any question that legal mechanisms are in place to remedy this action? In principle, your concerns are no different, except that, for a good number of years, legislatures and courts have failed to enforce the property rights of those being dumped on with respect to certain forms of pollution. This form of government failure has persisted since the industrial revolution when, in the name of so-called progress, certain forms of pollution were legally tolerated or ignored to benefit some popular regional employer or politically popular entity.

When all forms of physical trespass, be that smoke, particulate matter, etc., are legally recognized for what they are -- a physical trespass upon the property and rights of another -- concerns about difficulty in suing the offending party will be largely diminished. When any such cases are known to be slam-dunk wins for the person whose property is being polluted, those doing the polluting will no longer persist in doing so. Against a backdrop of property rights actually enforced, contingency and class-action cases are additional legal mechanisms that resolve this concern.

Next page: The elimination of habeas corpus is an immediate threat, not global warming