While I briefly described what I meant by “market environmentalism” in Journal 1, I think that a fuller explanation is in order. Therefore, I’d like to take this opportunity to elaborate on what I want to explore through this project.
There is, in the Wealth Redistribution Debate, an argument called “The Day After Problem.” It is the realization of the fact that, even if we did redistribute wealth so that everyone in society had the same amount of money and wealth as everyone else, the day after this perfectly equal wealth distribution was achieved inequality would return. The day after wealth was equalized, people would go out and spend their money, buying consumer goods, investing in producer goods, donating to various causes, attending concerts and sports games, traveling to visit family and see sights. At the end of the day, some people would have more money than other people again.
There are really a few points that can be drawn from this argument, and I’m sure that I’ll come back to some of them in the future, but the one that seems most important to me is that we live in a world of change. In fact, the concept of life implies the concept of change. It is theoretically possible to redistribute wealth within a community and to maintain that wealth distribution permanently, but the members of that community would have to be dead. Where there is life, where there is action, there is change, and, realistically, there’s nothing we can do to stop that.
For me, this point about the omnipresence of change has major implications for the climate debate as well. Even if we could develop and enforce a plan to reduce our carbon emissions to zero within just a few years (a few thousand well-placed bombs might do the trick), say January 1, 2020, there’s still the question of what we will do on January 2. Presumably, we will start to rebuild. We might do so in a way that again will produce carbon emissions. Or we might develop new development processes that produce no carbon but which, after a period of time, are discovered to negatively affect the natural environment in another way. The point is, we will continue to have an impact on the environment. We will continue to change the world, so long as we are alive.
The question I’d like to raise, then, is whether there’s any point in trying to restore the environment to a previous state of existence. Because, even if it were possible to do such a thing, that state couldn’t last for more than a moment, so long as human beings continue to live and act in the world. Would it be better, perhaps, to recognize our ability to effect change in the world and environment, to embrace it, and to use it to continue transforming our environment into a better state? The climate scientists say that our activities have changed the globe’s weather patterns. Can we use this information to embolden ourselves, empower ourselves, and seek the development of methods of actually controlling the weather? Can we eliminate hurricanes, or at least steer them away from populated areas? Can we reduce the severity of winter? We’ve depleted the ozone layer. Can we replace it? We have the power to destroy species. Can we obtain the power to recreate them? Can we further develop our control over forests and streams and wild animals and design a world that’s more suitable for us and for them? We change the world. Can we direct that change for good?
I take it for granted that such power is realizable only through the operation of the free market. However, that’s a powerful claim to make without justification, so a large part of my project will have to be such a justification. Why can’t the government develop this control? How would the two institutions (state and market) approach these problems? Why has government so far chosen the route of returning to a previous environmental state? To answer these questions, we have to ask what the proper way of viewing the environment really is. We have to have a proper understanding of the free market and of government. And we have to ask: How? Even if, after acknowledging the superiority of the free market over government and understanding the market’s functioning, the question remains: how can the market bring about a better environment?
Very few people are asking these questions. The focus is on “saving” the environment. The main method of dealing with the environmental “crises” we face is to restrict the choices available and to retard progress if that progress might lead to a worsening of the “problem.” There is almost universal agreement that we’ve hurt the planet, that we’ve done something “wrong,” and that we must go back and “fix” it. Almost no one has embraced this evidence of man’s abilities and asked how we can use it to continue changing the world (as we must) in new and better ways. These are the questions that I’d like to ask and, if I can, answer.
I’m labelling this project “market environmentalism” because the market does not stop to ask “should?” or “how?” It just does things. If left unchecked, I believe the market would continue to enable man to change the earth and create a new and better environment automatically. This whole debate would be unnecessary without the intervention of government and its top-down “solutions.” That doesn’t mean that the market process that so enabled us wouldn’t be worthy of examination and explanation. But the necessity of asking and answering and addressing these questions arises, really, from the fact that our government is asking and answering and addressing an opposite set of questions.
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