《Week 12-ENVIRONMENTALISM IN THE LIGHT》.pdf

ARTICLES ENVIRONMENTALISM IN THE LIGHT OF MENGER AND MISES GEORGE REISMAN I he two essential claims of the environmentalists, which I take for Tgranted are already well known, are (1) that continued economic progress is impossible because of the impending exhaustion of natu- ral resources (it is from this notion that the slogan “reduce, reuse, recycle” comes), and (2) that continued economic progress, indeed, much of the eco- nomic progress that we have had up to now, is destructive of the environment and is therefore dangerous. The essential policy prescription of the environ- mentalists is the prohibition of self-interested individual action insofar as the byproduct of such action when performed on a mass basis is alleged damage to the environment. The leading concrete example of this policy prescription is the attempt now under way to force individuals to give up such things as their automobiles and air conditioners on the grounds that the byproduct of hundreds of millions or billions of people operating such devices is to cause global warming. And this same example, of course, is presently the leading example of the alleged dangers of economic progress. The basis of my critique of the essential claims of the environmentalists is Carl Menger’s theory of goods. The basis of my critique of their essential pol- icy prescription is the spirit of individualism that runs throughout the writ- ings of Ludwig von Mises. GEORGE REISMAN is professor of economics at Pepperdine University. He is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Ill.: Jameson Books, 1996) and is the trans- lator of Ludwig von Mises’s Epistemological Problems of Economics (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1960). His Web site is . This article is from the Mises Memorial Lecture delivered at t