Free-market environmentalism is a way of addressing environmental issues with market-based solutions, sound science, and respect for private property rights. Public policies based on this approach include using cost-cost and cost-benefit analysis to determine if regulations are necessary or desirable, improving the definition of private property rights to solve problems involving common ownership and negative externalities, and rejecting policies based on fear, hyperbole, and “junk science.”
1.Energy independence is an illusion. Markets, not politics should determine how much energy we import.
2.Gasoline prices are market-driven. Government policies, not greedy oil companies, are responsible for rising gasoline prices.
3.Global warming is not a crisis. Concerns over global warming do not justify higher energy taxes or carbon “cap-and-trade” programs.
4.Air pollution is not a major public health problem. Air quality is better today in virtually all parts of the U.S. than at any time since measurement began, making new regulations unnecessary.
5.Mercury is not a major public health problem. The public health effects of mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants do not justify restrictions on the use of coal.
6.Biofuels should not be subsidized. Ethanol and other biofuels do not produce environmental or economic benefits that justify their subsidization.
7.CAFE standards sacrifice lives for oil. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards is a legislative restriction of the types of vehicles Americans purchase and drive. But there are more cost-effective ways to save fuel, and CAFE standards have a terrible unintended consequence: needless highway deaths.
8.Electric deregulation is still necessary. Extending price caps and blocking construction of new power plants are harmful to the long-tern health of electric markets.
9.Liquefied natural gas is part of the solution. LNG is a clean and safe source of energy that is at risk because of environmentalist opposition.
10.Nuclear power is part of the solution. Nuclear power is an important part of the nation’s energy portfolio. Regulatory barriers to the expansion of nuclear power ought to be removed.
