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Environmentalism

6 min read

Part of Regulation and the administrative state.

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Every episode (3)

Who argued it

Sterling Burnett · Ronald Bailey · Walter Block

Climate Change · Economic Growth · Public Policy · Market Economics · Property Rights · Libertarianism

Background

Environmentalism as quasi-religion

Bob Zadek opens the topic by asserting that core principles of environmentalism contradict every concept of sound economic thinking, and that no one has ever made an economic case for it; instead, he says, the case rests on quasi-religious beliefs and slogans such as “save the planet,” “save the whale,” “save the polar bear.” The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023)

Mike Munger, a professor of political science, economics, and public policy at Duke University, accepts for the sake of argument that global warming exists and is anthropogenic, then argues that environmentalists have fetishized garbage, turning it into religious tokens. He describes a murky view of Gaia, the Earth Mother, as a kind of quasi-religious worship, and says that under a religion one is not interested in doing things for oneself but in sacrificing. The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023)

Zadek calls sacrifice a magic word in discussing environmentalism: it means to do without, to make one’s life worse, and in its bloodiest meaning to kill somebody to curry favor with the gods. He notes that environmentalism says to do without something today because — and that the “because” never gets finished except in the vaguest of terms. The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023) In the later episode he calls environmentalism the mother of all wealth transfers, moving wealth from the present to the future, and asks why he should be persuaded to live worse so that somebody he will never meet a thousand years from now will theoretically live better. The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023)

Munger separates cost or investment from sacrifice: saving for a house, or taking less so that one’s children have a better life, is an investment, whereas a sacrifice must be literally wasted, as when a fatted calf, a sheep or a chicken was burned on an altar as a sign of devotion. He calls himself an environmentalist and a conservative, and says the job is to conserve resources to pass them on to future generations by not wasting them, which he distinguishes from not using them. The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023)

The Germany case

Munger’s central illustration is Germany. Worried about nuclear waste and pressed by protests, Germany shut down its nuclear power plants to save the environment. Munger argues the premise that we need to conserve resources does not lead to that action, since conserving resources would argue for continuing to use nuclear power. After the closures, Germany was forced to run natural gas for much of its electricity, and because of the war in Russia and Ukraine the price rose substantially, requiring ships and other means of acquiring the gas. Munger cites estimates that Germany is using nearly three times as much fossil fuel as before it closed the plants, concluding that the religious view produced policies that use more fossil fuel and create more carbon. The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023)

Landfills, recycling and shortage

Munger addresses the belief that landfill space was running out. He says a report from the EPA in the late ’80s and early ’90s found many landfills unsafe and leaking poisonous chemicals, so small unlicensed landfills were closed; hundreds of new landfills were built with a rubber seal underneath so leachates cannot get out. Thousands were closed and hundreds opened, and he states that the United States now has 50% more landfill space than in 1980 — half again as much — and that there is no landfill shortage. Recycling, in his account, is a religious sacrifice to show that you care about the environment and is environmentally wasteful because it wastes energy; he says the energy wasted on recycling is criminal and that if you care about the environment you should outlaw recycling tomorrow. The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023)

Zadek responds that the word shortage has almost no meaning, that there is no such thing, and that shortage really means price rather than quantity: diamonds are expensive, but anyone who wants one can have it if they pay the price. He draws a second lesson from the landfill history — that garbage was temporarily put into the ground because that made the most economic sense at the time, and that science and industry later discovered a product that fixed the problem. On his account environmentalism assumes knowledge is frozen in 2023 and that nobody will ever figure out how to fix sea rising or CO2, forgetting that science and knowledge continually make the world better. The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023)

What environmentalism wants

In the later episode Munger disputes Zadek’s framing that environmentalists are primarily concerned about future generations of humans. He says they are concerned about the welfare of the planet, of non-human species, and the purity of oceans, conceiving of the Earth as an entity toward which we have obligations of stewardship, in traditions that go back a long way and hold that you are not supposed to change things. He says the difficulty he has with many people who call themselves environmentalists is that they do not like people, and that they want the world to be unchanged. He offers the Avengers villain Thanos as, as far as he can tell, a perfect environmentalist: concerned about the future of the universe, able to kill half the people in it with the stones, caring nothing for future people and everything for the universe not being overburdened by what he calls parasites. Munger concludes that at its core environmentalism hates humanity, and that Zadek understates the case by saying we are supposed to care about future generations. The ‘Broken Window Fallacy’ is Back (2023)

Across episodes: the 2023-01-15 and 2023-01-16 episodes

The two episodes carry the same material: the same opening question from Zadek about environmentalism and economics, the same Germany example, the same Gaia framing, and the same sacrifice-versus-investment exchange. The later episode adds Munger’s answer on what environmentalists want — the Thanos passage and the claim that environmentalism hates humanity — which does not appear in the earlier treatment. Otherwise the episodes show no development between the two.

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