Law: Environmental Law 
Recommended
Copenhagen: Let the Games Begin!
Cato environmental scholar Pat Michaels comments on the various antics and rivalries already evident at the climate conference that kicked off this week in Copenhagen. Poorer countries, like India, are making demands that the richer nations subsidize them to achieve the costly goals of emission restrictions. Obama, who thinks such subsidies are a good idea, is being reminded by Democratic congressmen that the power to commit to new regulations is not a constitutional role of the executive branch. And politicians, who are sticking voters with the bill for their partisan efforts, will face angry voters in the upcoming 2010 mid-term election. Of the conference, Michaels says, “Expect a lot of heat, not much light, and a punt right into our next election.”
Seven Lessons of Cash-for-Clunkers' Failure
In the Washington Examiner, Irwin Stelzer discusses several reasons to reconsider the "success" of the cash-for-clunkers programs, which spent $3 billion of taxpayer dollars in just over a month. His final of seven points notes the negative impact on lower-income consumers; "By mandating the destruction of trade-ins, Congress removed 700,000 cars from the used-car market, inevitably driving up prices of the cars that lower-income consumers tend to buy." Stelzer's point transitions well into the up-coming debates on Cap-and-Trade that are sure to resurface come the end of the Senate's August recess. Yet another instance where environmental hype trumps human well-being.
Global Warming Debate Heating Up
Forecasting scholars Dr. Kesten C. Green and Dr. J. Scott Armstrong take on MIT's recent Global Warming report: "Policymakers and the public should be made aware that the forecasts from the MIT modellers, as well as those used by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], are merely the opinions of some scientists and computer modellers. ...The forecasting procedures were not valid and there is no reason for policymakers to take their forecasts seriously."
Patrick Michaels Speaks at Dartmouth
Patrick Michaels, Senior Fellow a the Cato Institute, spoke at Dartmouth College on Tuesday, February 23rd, to a packed auditorium where he argued that "The discussion surrounding global warming has become wildly extreme... You either believe it's the end of the world unless we do something about it right now, or you're a denier." Check out the story in The Dartmouth
January Op-Eds of the Month
Congratulations to Jonathan Slemrod and Charles Johnson for winning the Cato on Campus Op-Eds of the Month! Covering environmentalism and free speech on campus, their op-eds will now be considered for the Op-Ed of the Year and a full scholarship to Cato University.
Roger Pilon: "Are Property Rights Opposed to Environmental Protection?"
Who: Roger Pilon What: Speech on "Are Property Rights Opposed to Environmental Protection?" Where: Duke Law School Host: Duke Student Chapter, Federalist Society
December Op-Ed Winners
Congratulations to the first winners of the Cato on Campus Op-Ed Contest: Mytheos Holt and Simon Franěk! Their op-eds, both citing Patrick Michaels and dealing with environmental policy, tied for the December 2008 Cato on Campus Op-Ed Contest.
A Matter of Trust: Why Congress Should Turn Federal Lands into Fiduciary Trusts
Randal O'Toole, a senior fellow at Cat, writes, "Several Cato Institute studies have called for privatization of the public lands, but this idea is strongly resisted by environmentalists, recreationists, and other users of public land. An alternative policy that will both enhance the values sought by environmentalists and improve the fiscal management of the lands is to turn them into fiduciary trusts. Under this proposal, the U.S. would retain title to the lands, but the rules under which they would be governed would be very different."
Global Warming: No Urgent Danger; No Quick Fix
"Fact: The average surface temperature of the Earth is about 0.8 C warmer than it was in 1900, and human beings have something to do with it. But does that portend an unmitigated disaster? Can we do anything meaningful about it at this time? And if we can't, what should or can we do in the future?"
On Earth Day, Remember The Humans
By Indur Goklany: "On Earth Day, we should renew our promise to keep the environment clean—without adding to human misery or stalling improvements in the human condition."
The Common Law: How it protects the environment
"The purpose of this PERC Policy Series paper is to show, by examining specific cases in American and English history, that strong legal traditions enabled ordinary citizens to protect their air, land, and water, often against politically potent parties."
Rent Seeking Behind the Green Curtain
Jonathan H. Adler explains that "due to the cost and complexity of environmental rules, the environmental policy arena presents an extremely attractive target for those who wish to seek rents in Washington. Indeed, if there is one consistent interest group, it is the inside-the-beltway consultants, lobbyists, and litigators, who benefit from the continuation of a Byzantine regulatory structure, the intimate knowledge of which is incredibly valuable and rare."
'Knowing' Industrial Pollution: Nuisance Law and the Power of Tradition in a Time of Rapid Economic Change, 1840 – 1864
Experience shows that Common Law and Private Property Rights can be an alternative to top-down regulation on air pollution. In this essay, Christine Meisner Rosen examines nuisance law "from the perspective of an environmental historian who is interested in how people made sense of industrial pollution problems in the past."
Community-Run Fisheries: Avoiding the "Tragedy of the Commons"
By Donald R. Leal: "Community-Run Fisheries: Avoiding the "Tragedy of the Commons" presents case after case of communities that have effectively protected their fishing territories and preserved fish for the future."
A Better Way to Protect Endangered Species
Laura E. Huggins argues that for wildlife conservation to be successful, negative restrictions on landowners must be replaced with positive incentives.
Global Warming: Should Victims receive compensation?
"If one takes a position of principle, do those who are harmed by global warming have the right to compensation from those who contributed to it?"