An Epic debate is underway in our country. Proposed climate legislation would have a far-reaching impact on your standard of living and give government a portal into every aspect of our lives. The affordable, dependable and abundant energy upon which any great civilization is build is about to be rationed. Climate Chains is our effort to engage the culture, to petition a more reasoned approach to the intellectual debate that to often gets lost or overlooked in the irrational rush to pass climate legislation in an atmosphere of national and global panic. When you’ve built the greatest civilization in human history, fundamental changes in the economics of that system must be made with the most sober of consideration.
Featuring Chris Horner, Dr. Patrick Michaels, Dr. Marlo Lewis, Bob Ferguson, Todd Wynn, and Not Evil, Just Wrong’s Ann McElhinney,
The 2009 Henry Hazlitt Memorial Lecture, presented by Peter Schiff. Recorded at the annual Austrian Scholars Conference, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 13 March 2009.
On February 7, 2009, and in the week that followed, bushfires ignited across Victoria, in Australia. The fires raged through many towns, destroying at least 1,834 homes, and killing at least 209 people, more fatalities than any bushfire in Australian history.
Let’s compare: in the 1983 “Ash Wednesday” bushfires, seventy-five people died; in the 1939 “Black Friday” bushfires, seventy-one died; in all previous bushfires in Australia, back to data on bushfires in the 17th century, there were a total of 642 fatalities.[5] In short, Australia has just experienced what is far and away the most devastating bushfire in its history.
While the immediate causes of the various bushfires are thought to include arson, discarded cigarette butts, faulty power lines, or lightning strikes, these initial fires transformed into huge infernos and spread uncontrollably across Victoria only because of extremely high fuel loads throughout the state’s bushland. The reason? For years, local governments have neglected to manage fire hazards on their land in order to be faithful to the principles of environmentalism — a philosophy that contends that nature has intrinsic value that must be preserved, regardless of any use it has to man. The result has been that people have sacrificed their prosperity and even survival in an attempt to preserve the unspoiled sanctity of nature.
In the case of land management, environmentalists have invoked the alleged intrinsic value of nature to oppose the controlled burning of bushland, the clearing of vegetation and the prevention of excessive fire hazards in government-controlled land and adjacent private property. They have lobbied governments to prohibit the clearing of trees and shrubs and have been eternally hostile to all attempts to reduce the “bounty of nature” that has stoked the deadly fires that have spread across Victoria. How Environmentalism Contributed to the Bushfires
Under the influence of the philosophy of environmentalism, as well as political pressure from environmentalist groups and an “environmentally conscious” electorate, local councils have refused for years to clear the vegetation that has now served as fuel for lethal infernos. The modus operandi of these bureaucrats and their ecosupporters has been to insist on “rigorous” environmental assessments, which in envirospeak means, assessments that continue until reasons have been found to prevent any interference with the natural state of public land. In addition to perpetually stalling any clearing of trees or vegetation, government councils have also prohibited people from clearing trees and vegetation from their own property, aggressively pursuing those who break environmental-protection laws that place the “welfare” of trees above the property rights and safety of people.
In 2002, Liam Sheahan, a resident of Reedy Creek in Victoria, was prosecuted for disregarding local laws and bulldozing approximately 250 trees on his own property to make a fire break next to his home.[7] Council laws prohibited Mr. Sheahan from clearing trees further than six meters away from his house, but he went ahead with his decision to create a 100 meter fire break. During the resulting prosecution, bushfire expert Dr. Kevin Tolhurst testified on Mr. Sheahan’s behalf, telling the court that the clearing had reduced the fire risk to Mr. Sheahan’s home from extreme to moderate. According to Mr. Sheahan, “The council stood up in court and made us to look like the worst, wanton environmental vandals on the earth. We’ve got thousands of trees on our property. We cleared about 247.” Mr. Sheahan’s prosecution cost him $100,000 in fines and legal fees, but when the bushfires swept through his town in February 2009, his actions were vindicated — his home was the only property left standing in a two-kilometer area, while neighboring properties were destroyed. His disregard for environmental laws saved his home and the lives of his family.
Warwick Spooner was not so lucky. His mother and brother were killed as the bushfires consumed their home in Strathewen in Victoria. He was in no doubt as to why the tragedy had occurred, telling the Nillumbik council, “We’ve lost two people in my family because you [jerks] won’t cut trees down.… We wanted trees cut down on the side of the road, … and you can’t even cut the grass for God’s sake.”[9] He was not the only one to express such frustrations, with another resident complaining to the council that her repeated requests to reduce vegetation growth on public land had been ignored.
In 2003, bushfire experts Rod Incoll and David Packham argued against planning regulations proposed to the council by environmentalist groups. These regulations, which were passed by the council, included restrictions against the removal of vegetation “and worse still, the requirement for planting vegetation around and almost over houses, as part of any planning permit to build a house in the shire of Nillumbik, so it gave the appearance from the outside of being a forest.”
Two weeks before the bushfires, Mr. Packham alerted Victorian residents to the critical fire conditions in the Victorian bush, warning them that bushfires could destroy between 1,000 and 2,000 homes and kill 100 people. This frightening prediction may have sounded alarmist until hundreds were burned to death weeks later. During the fires, Mr. Packham followed up his predictions with an explanation of the carnage. He explained that fuel levels in public land had been allowed to reach dangerous levels due to environmentalist hostility to vegetation removal and controlled burning.
It has been a difficult lesson for me to accept that despite the severe damage to our forests and even a fatal fire in our nation’s capital [the Canberra bushfires in 2003], the political decision has been to do nothing that will change the extreme threat to which our forests and rural lands are exposed.… It is hard for me to see this perversion of public policy and to accept that the folk of the bush have lost their battle to live a safe life in a cared-for rural and forest environment, all because of the environmental fantasies of outraged extremists and latte conservationists.
Mr. Packham later branded environmentalists as “eco-terrorists waging a jihad” against prescribed burning, explaining that “[t]he green movement is directly responsible for the severity of these fires through their opposition to prescribed burning.”[13]
As these incidents make clear, the negligent and authoritarian actions of local councils have contributed substantially to the severity of the Victorian bushfires. But they are the predictable consequence of a political atmosphere saturated with environmentalist philosophy, environmentalist lobby groups, and an electorate that views the Greens party (Australia’s third-largest political party) as a benign protest vote, ideal for showing their disaffection with the major political parties. Under such pressure, local councils are faithfully implementing the philosophy of environmentalism, which requires them to reduce humanity’s “footprint” on nature, and tells them that the inherent value of nonconscious entities like trees and shrubs is more important than the desires of those rapacious human beings who plunder nature for their own selfish gain. Response to The Bushfires by Government and Environmentalist Groups
Having failed to achieve damage control in the bushfires through proper land management, the response from government officials has been a predictable game of public-relations damage control. Councils have responded to fierce criticism of their aversion to land clearance and controlled burning with promises that they will reassess their planning and environmental policies. Such promises would sound more genuine if not for the fact that problems of insufficient fuel reduction and controlled burning on public land have been well known for decades. These problems having been highlighted extensively in previous bushfire inquiries, which are a recurring event in a country as prone to bushfires as Australia. For Warwick Spooner, this latest promise of review was little comfort. He told Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen, “It’s too late now mate. We’ve lost families, we’ve lost people.”
Any attempts to increase land clearing and controlled burning to prevent bushfire damage may also face greater constraints from federal environmental laws in the near future. The Department of Environment confirmed that they have received a public submission calling for controlled burning to be listed under federal law as a “key threatening process,” defined as a process that “threatens, or may threaten, the survival, abundance or evolutionary development of a native species or ecological community.” Listing would require the minister to consider a threat-abatement plan for controlled burning, to find the most “feasible, effective and efficient way to abate the process.” Already listed as a key threatening process is land clearance, including “clearance of native vegetation for crops, improved, [sic] pasture, plantations, gardens, houses, mines, buildings and roads.”
Meanwhile, there is no sign of any self-examination by environmentalist groups. Rather than reconsider their cherished environmental-preservation laws, which have helped fuel the fires, environmentalists have taken the bushfires as an opportunity to selectively find evidence of human-induced global warming.[20]
Proponents of this theory have been eagerly pointing out that the bushfires occurred during a heat wave across southeast Australia that has caused record-high temperatures during the summer.
Referring to Australia’s especially hot weather in the last twelve years, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong assured the public that “[a]ll of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen.” For obvious reasons, she did not comment on whether the simultaneous record low temperatures in other parts of the world — such as the United States, Canada, England, France, Italy, Germany, and India — are also “what scientists told us would happen.”
Rather than simply removing coercive restrictions that have prevented private landowners from clearing trees on their own property, the government is set to respond to the bushfires by imposing new coercive restrictions. This time, private landowners will be prevented from having trees too close to their property. Thus, having already seized sole power to remove trees and vegetation on private property (on the assumption that property owners are too evil or stupid to be trusted with these decisions) and having thereby forced Victorian residents into a disastrous inferno through their previous regulations, the government is convinced that it is the proper decision-making body to decide when property owners can plant trees.
While this kind of thinking demonstrates the government’s boundless arrogance and insatiable desire for control, the danger posed to human life from public-land mismanagement runs much deeper than the specific environmental laws and policies currently in place, or even the laws to come. The root of the problem is the philosophy of environmentalism, which permeates all land-management decisions, guaranteeing hostility to any attempts to interfere with “the balance of nature.” Despite having the legal power to undertake controlled burning on its land, the Yarra Ranges Shire in Victoria refused to do this for years before it was hit by the bushfires, instead calling for “rigorous” environmental assessments to determine the breeding seasons of local flora and fauna and the effect on endangered Leadbeater’s possums. So long as such considerations remain above concern for human life and liberty, there is little prospect of reducing the impact of natural disasters. How Private Land Ownership Would Reduce Bushfire Risk
Because private ownership entails the right to control one’s own property, and because some people may not wish to sacrifice their lives to prevent interference with local possums, environmentalists seek to achieve their goals through government ownership of land — land socialism. In this endeavor, they have been very successful. State forests, national parks, and other Crown land in Victoria make up approximately one third of the state but contributed four-fifths of the February 2009 bushfires. And as with all examples of land socialism, the situation in Victoria has created an incentive structure that has destroyed accountability, thereby exacerbating the disaster.
As mere caretakers of public land, bureaucrats and local politicians are not liable for any loss caused by their mismanagement. Nor do they have any personal stake in its capital value. When property is destroyed due to their ineptitude and their enslavement to the philosophy of environmentalism, their savings are not in danger. If anyone is required to pay for compensation, it is taxpayers who have had nothing to do with the whole mess. For the local councilor or the state or federal politician, what matters is getting the green vote, showing how “environmentally conscious” they are, and placating all those green lobby groups and media darlings that might say nasty things about them if they don’t toe the line.
Had the bushland areas in Victoria been private property, the owner of the land would be subject to a duty of care to his neighbors under tort laws and would be liable for any damage caused to his neighbors’ properties by his own negligence. He certainly would not be able to claim as a defense the fact that his own environmental policies make it difficult for him clear vegetation or conduct controlled burning. And as a result, he would have a strong incentive to ensure that the land is properly managed, neither plundered of vegetation to the point that it loses its capital value, nor allowed to overgrow into a dangerous fire hazard.
Had these bushland areas been regarded as unowned land, ripe for homesteading, then adjacent property owners would have been able to clear fire breaks to their hearts’ content, homesteading as much land as necessary for a safe buffer between themselves and the bushlands beyond.
Had the areas of private property adjacent to these bushlands been treated as genuine private property — unconstrained by coercive regulation — then adjacent property owners would have been able to clear trees and vegetation on their own land, and build facilities to cope with bushfires, without groveling for permission from their political masters. They would not have been inhibited by mountains of regulations and armies of bureaucrats who frustrated their attempts at safety. They certainly would not have been prohibited from clearing vegetation before the fire has burned them out and then prohibited from planting trees after the damage had already been done.
The danger of bushfires and other natural disasters is ever present, but it is not a danger that we must accept passively as an immutable act of nature. It is a danger that can be managed or exacerbated. And it is a danger that is currently exacerbated by the philosophy of environmentalism and the land socialism that is used to implement this philosophy. In describing the California bushfires in 2003, Lew Rockwell diagnoses the problem:
What went wrong? The problem is in the theory of environmentalism. Under it, ownership is the enemy. Nature is an end in itself. So it must be owned publicly, that is, by the state. The state, in its management of this land, must not do anything to it. There must not be controlled burning, brush clearing, clear cutting, or even tourism. We can admire it from afar, but the work of human hands must never intervene.
Then the brush begins to gather. It piles higher and higher. Old growth rots. Uncontrolled growing leads to crowding. When the weather gets hot the stuff combusts. Then the winds blow and the fires spread. It’s been the same story for several decades now, ever since the loony theory that nature should be left alone took hold.
So long as governments remain under the sway of environmentalist philosophy and arrogate massive tracts of land to their own inept control, no amount of legal tinkering will prevent the next bushfire. How many more will die then?
“The efficient and effective way to keep the slaves in line was to get in their heads.”
“Exorcise the symbols of power from your mind. They have no more power over you than what you give them. The guns of governments remain a physical threat, but if we can ’t even free our minds, what hope can we ever have of freeing our bodies?”
Andrew Carroll made a public event of getting arrested for holding a bit of vegetation. 42 supporters and media watched as black-clad enforcers bound him and took him away.
A statement about what a Libertarian is….enjoy and evolve..
A libertarian is a person – any person – who consistently advocates individual freedom and consistently opposes the initiation of the use of coercion by anyone upon the person or property of anyone else for any reason. (Coercion is here defined as any action taken by a human being against the will or without the permission of another human being with respect to his or her body or property. This includes murder, rape, kidnaping, assault, trespassing, burglary, robbery, arson and fraud.) Some libertarians (such as the late Robert LeFevre) not only oppose all forms of initiatory coercion, but also the use of retaliatory coercion (revenge or criminal justice). The vast majority of libertarians, however, maintain that physical force used in self-defense or defense of one’s family or property is fully justifiable.
But, all libertarians, by definition, at least oppose the initiatory use of coercion. They support the rational principle of the individual human rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. This means that each individual has the right to keep what he earns for himself and his family, and this includes the right to use, trade, sell, give away, or dispose of his property as he sees fit. A person who violates the rights of others by initiating coercion, violence, or fraud against them forfeits his right to be left alone by government and may be arrested, charged, tried, and imprisoned, deported or executed if convicted (depending on the nature of his or her crimes). The basic, proper function of lawful government is therefore limited to protecting these rights of the peaceful individual from criminals and foreign aggression, and in not violating these rights itself, for if government is allowed to go beyond this legitimate function and itself initiates force in violation of the rights of peaceful citizens, it necessarily contradicts the only rational justification for its own existence by acting criminally itself.
Real libertarians take individual rights seriously – seriously enough to consistently uphold them against the initiation of the use of force by anyone (including government) for any reason. This means that government must be bound by the policy of “laissez faire” – which means that government has no business coercively interfering with the lives of peaceful (non-coercive) citizens in their private affairs and voluntary (market) relationships.
Libertarians may or may not approve of some of the things that some people may do in private or in voluntary relations, but whatever their own code of personal moral conduct is, they do not seek to ban any private or voluntary activities by the use of force, including the force of government action. To do so would be to violate the very principle of individual rights of person and property, and thereby undercut any rational argument in favor of freedom or defense of the free-market system. Those exception makers and outright coercive busy-bodies in our midst (referred to as “interventionists” or “statists” by libertarians) who do want to abandon government by principle and instead put Whim in charge of the use of legal coercion are the people who help set the stage for arbitrary and capricious governmental tyranny – leading in the direction of totalitarian dictatorship.
Libertarians Are Not Conservatives
Libertarians are not “conservatives”: libertarians are radicals (principled advocates) for individual freedom and responsibility – and the pure free-market private-enterprise economic system which would result from a consistent application of that principle. A “conservative” on the other hand is one who wishes to preserve the status quo. The status quo in America today is the semi-socialist, semi-fascist mixed-economy welfare-state – a system inimical to personal freedom and responsibility. Libertarians do not support such a system, and oppose any and all measures to expand it while favoring the total repeal of interventionist laws and regulatory agencies.
Conservatives of the William F. Buckley or William Bennett variety are generally more concerned with imposing “order” than with allowing freedom. Although they often (and rightly) complain that government has got “too big” and too meddlesome in our lives, on some specific issues they themselves favor using the political power of government to legislate and enforce their view of morality upon the populace in “the national interest” or for the “social good.” William Bennett, for example, opposes the legalization and/or decriminalization of the sale and use of heroin and cocaine, and he continues to support the no-win “War on Drugs” which is causing violence to escalate in our society. Libertarians, on the other hand, realize that “enforced morality” (in such personal matters) is a contradiction in terms: without freedom of choice there can be no moral responsibility and personal growth.
Libertarians also perceive that freedom brings about a more complex, dynamic and harmonious order in society (co-ordinated by the market price mechanism) than any static view of order imposed by central political planning and regulations of our non-coercive behaviors.
Libertarians are for individual freedom – and this includes the freedom of people to do some things that we and other people may disapprove of. A person should be free (from coercive interference) to do what he pleases with his own life and property, as long as he does not violate (through coercive interference) the same right of other peaceful persons to do what they want with their lives and properties. (The second clause is logically implied in the first.) Libertarians do not oppose non-coercive persuasion, educational efforts, private advertising campaigns, organized boycotts, or even social ostracism as means of trying to effect changes in the private behavior of others. (Many people have stopped smoking tobacco in recent years partly as a result of education and persuasion by friends and family members.) What libertarians do oppose is the attempt by anyone (individuals or government officials) to impose their own views of “fairness” or personal morality on others through the initiation of the use of coercion, by either personal violence or political legislation and governmental action. This principled position sets libertarians apart from conservatives as well as other non-libertarians.
Libertarians Are Not Welfare-State “Liberals”
Libertarians are not to be confused with the so-called “civil libertarians” which typify the membership and leadership of the American Civil Liberties Union. It is true that the ACLU has come to the defense of freedom of speech for certain minorities (e.g., nazis, communists, and anarchists) and this is commendable – but the podium has often been at taxpayers’ expense, which is a”no-no” from the real libertarian perspective. Many “civil libertarians” believe that some people have a “right” to violate the rights of others; they claim there is a “right to a job” or a “right” to welfare payments or a “right”” to “free education” or a “right” to free child care – all at the expense of the people (usually the taxpayers) who are forced to pay for these so-called “rights.” Real libertarians are for true freedom, not “freedom” at the forced expense of others. The only obligation that true rights impose on persons is of a negative kind: not to interfere with the rights of other people – i.e., to refrain from the initiation of the use of coercion. This is the core principle of libertarianism and is sometimes called the ‘Non-Aggression Axiom’.
Welfare-state “liberals” and “civil libertarians” speak of “rights” of people as members of specially privileged groups, such as “women’s rights” or “gay rights” or “rights of the handicapped” or even so-called “animal rights”! Real libertarians know that there are only individual rights, not group rights. There is no such thing as “gay rights” or “black rights” or “white rights” or left-handed Martian rights. Government must not be used to dish out special privileges to any group for any reason, since government cannot give anyone anything unless it takes it away from others by force, thereby violating their rights. There can be no such thing as a “right” to violate the rights of others.
No doubt there are some well-intentioned ACLU members who do promote true civil liberties and uphold human rights; however, the ACLU has not come to the defense of the rights of school children whose freedom is being violated daily by compulsory attendance laws and the tyranny of Federally-ordered forced busing. Nor do I know of any case in which the ACLU has defended the constitutional rights of businessmen who are being harassed by OSHA agents and other bureaucrats, or hounded by such arbitrary and subjective laws as the antitrust acts. Indeed, many “civil libertarians” seem callously insensitive to the victims of crime and legal plunder – while they defend known criminals from justice.
Because of their consistent adherence to the principle of individual rights, libertarians are the only true defenders of liberty — civil or otherwise. Real libertarians understand that freedom of speech and other civil liberties depend on the sanctity of private property – not its violation by anti-discrimination laws and other forms of government intervention.
Libertarians Are Not for Unlimited Majority Rule
Libertarians are not democrats. While majority rule may or may not be as good as any other mechanism for selecting the men and women who administer the offices of government, libertarians deny that anyone or any group has a right to rule over other peaceful (non-coercive) citizens – whether they are in the majority or minority at any given time. If stealing is wrong for an individual to do, it is still wrong when conducted by a large group or by a majority vote. The number of people involved in an act does not change the rightness or wrongness of the act. There is no magic number that turns an individual wrong into a collective right. In a libertarian republic, the basic policy of government (i.e., laissez faire) is set by reference to fundamental principle — the principle of individual rights — and not determined by a show of hands. Libertarians uphold the right of the peaceful individual to self-ownership and private property against any who would violate this right – even a majority.
Libertarians Are Not Anarchists
Libertarians are not anarchists. While it is true that some individuals favor a political system of competing vigilante committees, and refer to this position as “anarcho-capitalism” (a view formerly held by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard), this is a confusing misnomer based on an apparent failure to clearly distinguish between the nature of market institutions (which do not involve the use of coercion at all, either initiatory or retaliatory) and the nature of coercive entities (criminal or legal). Actually, libertarianism rests on the concepts of individualism, self-ownership, private property, & voluntary (market) exchange. Classical anarchism not only opposed the political state, but also some voluntary organizations of which it disapproved. Most importantly, true anarchists opposed private property – without which no voluntary relationships are possible. Today’s libertarians are in the classical liberal tradition of Algernon Sidney, John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Edmund Burke, Herbert Spencer, and Frederic Bastiat – not the anarchist tradition of Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Bakunin.
Libertarians Are Not Pragmatists
Libertarians do not advocate freedom or the free-market economy merely because “it works” (which it does better than any other system); they support it as the only non-coercive and just system – the system in which people are free to deal with one another on a voluntary basis as traders (exchangers of goods and services) instead of as masters and slaves – or as privileged class and exploited host. Others advocate government by whim. Libertarians adhere to certain principles, and without the guidance of principles and standards, all that is left is pragmatic expediency and the tyranny of government by whim. One might say that libertarians are “idealists” in the popular sense of that word; after all, libertarians stand for certain ideals – goals to strive for (e.g., less government intervention, more individual freedom and moral responsibility, free markets, etc.). Because libertarianism is based on man’s nature and the nature of reality, it is the most practicable social system. Libertarians are practical idealists.
