I do have a reference to some writing by Walter Block who is basically explaining the writing of Murray Rothbard (on whom much of todays Austrian theory stems, among others)
This article talks about the Libertarian view of pollution
I have cut out the first half of the article because it just goes on about whether breathing is CO2 pollution. The link to the full article is at the bottom.
The article is actually a letter written to Walter Block asking questions on pollution, the responses are in italics.
Quote:
My questions boil down to:
1. Is emission of carbon dioxide an invasion of property rights. (If so why, and what about breathing!)
<<Yes, GIGANTIC, MASSIVE CO2 emissions violate property rights; exhaling does not.
2. If it is an invasion of property rights how can it be enforced? (There is no way of connecting individual instances of damage to specific emitters)
<< It is enforced the same way laws against murder and rape are enforced. If there is a (hopefully very limited) government, then its main, perhaps even only task is to stop such violations as murder, rape, kidnapping, arson, fraud, and, yes, trespassing massive (not teeny) amounts of carbon dioxide. If we live under free market anarchism, then the private courts-police will do this.
<<Perhaps you are uncomfortable with the notion that we would be putting in jail someone (the massive emittter), for doing something to a greater degree that we all do (exhaling) to a lesser degree. But there is precedent for this. We can all talk in a normal voice; but we cannot get a super bullhorn, and scream at people so loudly though it that we literally deafen them. We all smell a bit, even after taking a shower, but that is entirely legal. However, it should not be within the law to set up a pig farm or a tanning factory in a residential neighbourhood that was built in a relatively odor-free environment. It is quite all right to shine a flashlight at someone’s house. But not such a powerful one that burns down this dwelling.
<<There is too a "way of connecting individual instances of damage to specific emitters." Consider automobile pollution. There are millions of cars out there, emitting pollutants into hundreds of millions of people’s lungs. Yes, yes, it would appear to be difficult if not impossible (transactions costs, beloved of the pinko Chicago School of economics, doncha know?) to handle this through law suits. But, as Rothbard says, that is because at present we have road and highway socialism. If these transit lanes were privatized (see my book on that subject, here or here), then victims of such pollution would take these owners to court, and there would be many fewer of them than motorists. It would be relatively easy to do so. Road owners would thus have an incentive to anticipate this risk to themselves, by, presumably, charging VERY high prices to polluting cars. Adam Smith’s "invisible hand" would thus lead us in the direction of air quality sanity.
3. If it is not an invasion of property rights then how can we solve the problem of global warming without infringing the property rights of the emitter?
<<If we are still in arguendo mode, positing a vast polluter, then we are not at all violating his rights when we compel him to cease and desist. Hey, he is in effect a murderer. We stop him in self defense, just as we would a guy running at us, screaming and brandishing a knife or gun.
4. It is theoretically possible for many de-minimis acts to collectively cause a problem. Take a smaller scale analogy. I own a river. A small boy urinates in the river. This causes no harm to the river or the fish in it, it is invisible cannot be detected by man’s senses and does no harm. However, if 1000 or 10,000 unconnected boys all urinate in my river at the same time then all the fish in my river will die and my property rights will clearly have been violated. However, on what basis do I have any right to stop any single boy whose individual actions are below any sensible de-minimis threshold and do not constitute a violation of property rights alone?
<< There is a disanalogy between urinating on someone else’s property and exhaling, when a few molecules of CO2 waft over onto someone else’s property. Forget about the "small boy." The criminal law works differently for children than for adults. Also, unowned rivers present difficulties, so I’ll ignore them as well. If an adult urinates in my front yard with no permission, I can have him arrested, and properly so. I might well not do so, if the guy was desperate, there were no mens’ rooms around etc. But, if I knew that 1000 men were going to inundate my garden in advance, I would again have the right to stop them through force of law, and this time I probably would, otherwise I’d have no garden left. However, if there were one or 1000 men who exhaled near my property, and all of their CO2 "trespassed" on my garden, one, I would not know about it, and two, the law would properly defend their right to this "invasion," not mine to stop them. Why? Because people have been exhaling from time immemorial; thus, our grandfathers have homesteaded this right for us, the present generation. Of course, they have been urinating too, for all these epochs. But, NOT on other people’s property. The homeowners, presumably, took sharp offense at THAT practice.
5. Why is even a large emission of carbon dioxide a violation of property rights? As Rothbard says:
"The reason why not is that these boundary crossings do not interfere with anyone’s exclusive possession, use or enjoyment of their property. They are invisible, cannot be detected by man’s senses, and do no harm. They are therefore not really invasions of property, for we must refine our concept of invasion to mean not just boundary crossing, but boundary crossings that in some way interfere with the owner’s use or enjoyment of this property. What counts is whether the senses of the property owner are interfered with."
The emissions of carbon dioxide, even in large quantities at say a power station, are "invisible, cannot be detected by man’s senses, and do no harm" themselves. It is only when these emissions join with other emissions from other sources and react with the other gases in the atmosphere that the alleged greenhouse effect takes place, which allegedly causes for example the sea levels to rise and damage another’s property.
The emitters’ actions only cause a violation of property rights if other people act in a certain way and the emitter has no control over the actions of the other people. How can it be a violation of property rights to do something that causes no harm itself, but leads to harm only if other people do something?
<< Let’s take noise as an analogy, here. I live next door to a sports stadium where thousands of people gather. I was there first. I homesteaded the rights to a reasonably quiet environment. I live in a large city, so there is always SOME noise about; it is not deathly quiet. My neighbour schedules athletic events at 4am, while I am trying to sleep. (I know this is unlikely, but work with me here.) Now, if there were one or two people talking, even loudly, downstairs, I not only would not object (I live on the 30th floor, and can hardly hear them), but the law would properly not allow me to protest, since small groups of people homesteaded such rights (there were doing that long before my building was constructed). But when tens of thousands of people cheer on for the home team, they keep me awake. So here is a case where "The emitters’ actions only cause a violation of property rights if other people act in a certain way and the emitter has no control over the actions of the other people." Any one fan yelling in the stadium is de minimus. No one fan can control the yells of other rooters. And, yet, surely, I may enjoin the entire stadium from keeping me awake, whereas I cannot object to a few people screaming. Here, we truly have a case where it can "be a violation of property rights to do something that causes no harm itself, but leads to harm only if other people do something."
6. How does the analogy with private roads help with respect to the atmosphere?
I can see how a private road system could work (love your book!), but I don’t see how the analogy carries over.
a. On what basis could ownership of the atmosphere be homesteaded ?
b. Even if people owned specific tracts of atmosphere how could the person whose property was damaged link the damage to the tract of atmosphere that took the emissions. The system is fluid and it would appear impossible to draw back a chain of causation to a specific tract of receiving atmosphere any more than to a specific emitter. And as Rothbard said:
As Rothbard says, "Thus, a strict causal connection must exist between an aggressor and a victim, and this connection must be provable beyond a reasonable doubt. It must be causality in the commonsense concept of strict proof of the ‘A hit B’ variety, not mere probability or statistical correlation."
<< a. I never said that the atmosphere could be homesteaded. I don’t think it can be, at least nowadays, since it is a superfluous good. It is not scarce. On the moon and Mars oxygen will be bought and sold like any other market commodity (or given away as a loss leader), but not here, not now. In talking about private roads I was merely demonstrating that transactions costs considerations would not preclude our society from viewing air pollution as a tort that could be dealt with by the courts. It is awkward in the extreme to have 300 million inhabitants of the U.S. sue some millions of car owners for pollution. But, if the nation’s highways were owned, say, by 100 corporations, it would be a lot more feasible.
<< b. Here is where environmental forensics comes in. If we had all along been dealing with the question of air pollution as we should have been, as a trespass of smoke or dirt particles, there would have also developed an industry devoted to demonstrating such rights violations. We have a profession that analyses semen, hair follicles, blood types, etc., because we properly see murder and rape as rights violations, and wish to determine "who dunnit." We have no such accomplishments with regard to air pollution because, as Rothbard demonstrates, we have long lost out way on this matter, in terms of proper law.
Thanks for your assistance with this; it really helps me to appreciate the power of libertarianism by examining the problem cases!
<< You are entirely welcome. Your questions were very good ones. If we cannot answer the difficult objections, we must rethink our libertarian positions. I think it is crucially important that the challenges you pose be refuted, because Ron Paul is now being criticized by left-wing environmentalists for having either no views, or incorrect ones, on these important issues. See on this here. I don't say, of course, that Congressman Paul would agree with every point I make above. But he and I are both followers of Murray N. Rothbard on this (and many other) issue(s), so I would not be totally surprised if he supported most of the analysis I offer.
January 18, 2012
Dr. Block [send him mail] is a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, and a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Defending the Undefendable and Labor Economics From A Free Market Perspective. His latest book is The Privatization of Roads and Highways.
Link to article
http://lewrockwell.com/block/block195.htmlReference
Rothbard, Murray N. 1982. "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution," Cato Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring; reprinted in Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, Walter Block, ed., Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1990;
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