“An unstated premise of eco-pessimism is that environmental conditions are, or recently were, optimal. The proclaimed faith of eco-pessimists is weirdly optimistic: These optimal conditions must and can be preserved or restored if government will make us minimize our carbon footprints and if government will ‘remake’ the economy.” (George Will, 2009)

Climate alarmism is now in its 4th decade. It can be dated, at least, to James Hansen’s congressional testimony in mid-1988, which inspired the New York Times to report on the front page:

If the current pace of the buildup of these gases continues, the effect is likely to be a warming of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit from the year 2025 to 2050…. The rise in global temperature is predicted to cause a thermal expansion of the oceans and to melt glaciers and polar ice, thus causing sea levels to rise by one to four feet by the middle of the next century.

Two leading free-market environmental scholars are Jason Hayes, Director of Environmental Policy at Mackinac Center for Public Policy (Midland, Michigan) and Todd Myers, Director of the Center for the Environment at Washington Policy Center (Seattle, Washington). The post below excerpts from their recent joint study, Sound Environmental Policy.

“… enlisting the power of free markets, property rights and rapid technological advances strengthens and improves environmental management at all levels.”

We recognize and embrace our responsibility to care for environmentally beautiful and productive lands. Proper stewardship of our forests, rivers, rangelands and open spaces is an essential part of our everyday life. We care for the environment and believe that individuals and organizations possess the local knowledge needed to make effective stewardship decisions. Moving land use and management decisions from state bureaucracies to individuals in the field will incentivize the best decisions and promote long-term benefits for our natural resources.…

Donald Boudreaux’s Cap Energy Prices to Further Economic Education, published in September 2001 by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), is a nice antidote to the Left’s old nostrum of price ceilings for energy affordability. The lessons imparted below can be applied to surge pricing (“price gouging”), the subject of this post last week at MasterResource.

Dear Senators Clinton and Schumer:

Having accepted a position on the economics faculty at George Mason University, I just moved from New York to Virginia. But until recently, you were my representatives in the world’s greatest deliberative body. I write to you now on a matter of maximum importance to me, to the Foundation for Economic Education, and, indeed, to all teachers and students of economics across the land.

I encourage you to follow your instincts and vote for price caps on energy.…

All told, it is cheaper to surge price than have consumers worry and waste the most precious and depleting commodity of all, a person’s time.

The free market is needed even more in an emergency than in normal times. In the current Pandemic, a run on toilet paper and paper towels occurred as consumers stocked up in the fear that shortages would persist. Back in the 1970s, gasoline and other petroleum products, underpriced by federal law, caused shortages where consumers repeatedly topped off their tanks in long gasoline lines at the service station.

Surge pricing (the proper term for ‘price gouging’) is needed from time to time to save consumers from themselves. Increasing prices to the point that consumers know that there will be supply at the store prevents panic buying, not to mention the worry and lost time hunting for uncertain supply.…