Environmentalists’ Eternal Blind Spot
24th November 2010
What environmentalists fail to grasp is that fossil fuels are buried treasure, and that treasure is not going to stay in the ground: someone’s going to dig it up. Government regulators may try to prevent that, but when you’re talking about billions of dollars (and the tax revenue that generates), people will find a way.
This is an eternal blind spot for environmentalists: people respond to incentives, and they won’t necessarily respond to regulations in the way that regulators think they will. That’s how the Endangered Species Act led landowners to destroy habitat to prevent the government from making their land worthless. That’s how incentives for electric cars wound up creating free golf cart sales to the well-off. That’s how subsidies for new efficient refrigerators led to more people having two fridges instead of one. That’s how helping to create the corn ethanol lobby (originally as a gasoline additive to address summertime carbon monoxide emissions) has led to an entrenched rent-seeking industry that engages in massive environmental despoliation. And now, once again, environmentalist actions lead to more, not less environmental damage. Will they never learn?