The Largest Minority

Ron Paul on the Environment

By Manila Ryce
Published Tuesday, December 4th, 2007, 12:00 pm
Filed under: Videos: Political, Environment, Videos, US Politics

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the worst idea on how to deal with our biggest problem: strict property rights to protect the environment.

WPvideo 1.10

Surely I’m not the only one who thinks this is an extremely bad idea. Paul’s solution to environmental degradation is to have every inch of this planet owned by someone. That means your neighbor has “the right” to pollute his patch of land all he wants. Ownership of anything does not guarantee the protection of it. In fact, it often means the opposite. With half of the world’s wealth in the hands of only 2% of the population, it’s big business who will own the majority of land. The biggest polluters will simply buy the land, air, and water they intend to pollute. Paul believes any real environmental protection is unconstitutional and that polluting is a right. There’s a reason he only got a 5% by the LCV for his environmental voting record.

Property lines are not real barriers. If ExxonMobil buys Alaska’s wildlife sanctuaries and exercises its “right” to turn them into giant oilfields, all 6 billion of us suffer from their choice. Simply saying that someone has “the right” to destroy these things is irresponsible and displays a grave ignorance of how ecosystems function. ALL pollution affects not just other people, but other species as well. Perhaps I’m a radical, but I don’t think the planet should be privatized into oblivion.

Perhaps Paul’s brand of right-libertarianism worked for our hypocritical founding fathers (when “property rights” also extended to human beings), but we now know that ecosystems are interconnected. To have a local understanding of accountability when it comes to the environment, as Paul does, you need to ignore an awful lot of scientific data. It’s not refineries at the North Pole which are causing the ice caps to melt. I can respect a man who stands by his principles, but there’s also something to be said for being sane enough to realize that dogmatic adherence to a certain philosophy over scientific evidence is just plain stupid.

12 Responses to “Ron Paul on the Environment”

Strict enforcement of property rights? Sounds like another one of those Libertarian one-size-fits-all problem solvers, like, “let the free market take care of it.”

Chomsky did a good job dismantling Paul’s “Libertarianism” here:

http://www.anarchismtoday.org/News/article/sid=74.html

Sam
12/4/07 at 6:04 pm
Gadz!!!
The Libertarians are so close to thinking clearly…except they can’t finish making the connection.
I think it is just intellectually lazy to say the markets will sort it out. Then why haven’t they?
They’ve had all the unregulated, unfettered access they could want and we are driving off a sub-prime scam crisis.

The free market works for the wealthy. Not the people.

Let’s make this election about the people.

Nando
12/4/07 at 8:40 pm
this discussion and philosophy does guarantee a clean environment beyond property lines. we have rights to life. when these are trespassed by a destroyed environment with toxic air and water we can cross borders to stop these malevolent powers. congressman Paul’s philosophy is very legitimate when understood properly.

matthieu
12/5/07 at 4:01 pm
@matthieu

“we have rights to life”

Of course we do. However, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been historically trumped by the “rights” of business.

“we can cross borders to stop these malevolent powers.”

Please elaborate.

Manila Ryce
12/5/07 at 5:53 pm
So, the idea is that if my property becomes polluted by the spillover from somebody else’s property, I can take them to court. So instead of environmental laws enforced by a governmental agency that’s accountable to the public, we instead just sue everybody we suspect of polluting our property? If I own a plot of land in the Southern US, and my land is subject to the desertification effect that scientists in part link to Global Warming, should I be able to sue everyone who drives a car, since they were all partially responsible for the pollution that ruined my property?

This lunatic world of course presumes that wealth and property are distributed equally, and that the justice system doesn’t favor those with more wealth and property.

The more I look at Libertarian-right philosophy, the more I get the sense that it’s profoundly anti-democratic. Paul wants to dismantle environmental laws, which means he’s against the advances that democratic struggle have brought over the past century, and he’s against the will of the vast majority of US and world opinion on the issue. That’s what you call an ideologue right? Those laws were put into place after long, hard struggles by many of the same kind of people that support Paul now: rural-based, social conservatives who were concerned about the way big industry was destroying their environment and way of life. Yes, much of this country’s original environmental activists came from the right! In fact, many of the current environmental protection laws and agencies we have now were signed into law by (*gasp*) a Republican, Richard Nixon.

Sam
12/5/07 at 6:48 pm
Restoring state and local authority over pollution issues will allow states to be more in step with their citizens, who know far more about what issues are really important than do our federal representatives (this should be common sense). That is why our Constitution was constructed and the worded the way it was, because our Founding Fathers knew that a strong Federal Government was not the answer to all of our problems.

The federal government has historically allowed for pollution to take place because it has declared that it has the sole authority to regulate corporations, which do a majority of the polluting. The reason that pollution has not gotten under control in this country is because lobbyists rule the all powerful federal government, and most citizens do not see the corruption (legal and illegal) that is taking place because for a majority of states Washington, DC is pretty far away. The Federal Government has and always will cater to the special interests, and disobeying the Constitution has allowed the Federal Government to claim FAR more power than the Constitution really allows it to have. If corporations were forced to be chartered at the state and local level, then they would be directly accountable to local populations for their actions. This is how corporations used to operate, until the Federal Government declared that corporations had the same rights as legal persons, and thus the Federal government had sole authority to regulate them. This is why local communities can protest and complain about pollution, but nothing gets done. It is impossible for The Federal Government to respond to the needs of local areas with even a fraction of the same efficiency as State and Local governments. Why is this so difficult to comprehend?

The reason that economic inequality persists is because we have an economic policy right now which drives up inflation (and thus our money becomes less valuable) and directly interferes with the natural goings on of the free market (namely by providing corporate welfare and by artificially manipulating interest rates). This is what has led to the current sub-prime mortgage crisis we are facing. Government interference is the PROBLEM not the ANSWER. We do not have a free market in this country, and we haven’t had one since 1913 at the latest. ‘Federal planning’ of economics combined with out huge welfare state (thanks federal government) and debasement of our currency by taking it off of the gold standard has harmed the middle and lower classes and has actually benefited the wealthy. Ron Paul explains this in detail and he should know, as he is a watchdog member of the Congressional Finance Committee. Go watch some of the vids online of him absolutely grilling the Federal Reserve for creating alot of the problems that our country is facing right now. He has been predicting these things and saying the same things for the past 30 years!

I sincerely urge everyone to read more into Ron Paul’s beliefs, because they are well thought out ideas that WILL work. In order to understand his philosophy you are going to have to do some research, and not just rely on minute long youtube clips, and soundbites from the mainstream media. Our problems are complicated because our system is complicated, and our system is complicated because we have not followed the Constitution or listened to the advice of our Founding Fathers. I challenge anyone to debate me on these issues further.

Nate
12/9/07 at 4:22 pm
@Nate:

> Restoring state and local authority over pollution issues will allow states to be more in step with their citizens, who know far more about what issues are really important than do our federal representatives (this should be common sense). That is why our Constitution was constructed and the worded the way it was, because our Founding Fathers knew that a strong Federal Government was not the answer to all of our problems.

Is that why they scrapped the Articles of Confederation, which gave the central government even LESS power than the Constitution they replaced it with did? The truth is, the framers of the Constitution hated democracy, and revised the Articles in order to secure their property from the threat of popular uprisings (see Shays Rebellion). In his book “The Articles of Confederation,” Merrill Jensen writes that even those among the founders inclined to avoid strong federation, once faced with the threat of popular rule “and realizing that a political alliance with conservatives from other states would be a safeguard if the radicals should capture the state government…gave up ‘state rights’ for ‘nationalism’ without hesitation.” The common mythology that the hypocritical founders were interested in creating more democracy (like you say) and not less is just that: a myth.

> The federal government has historically allowed for pollution to take place because it has declared that it has the sole authority to regulate corporations, which do a majority of the polluting.

State Governments have allowed corporations to pollute too. In fact, we can see that right now with Agrobusiness having various states outbid each other on which state will allow the company to pollute more, which will give it lower taxes, which will give it higher subsidies, which will be more lax in enforcing labor protection laws, etc. This is the result of deregulation, not over regulation. The reason the federal environmental protection laws were passed in the first place is to prevent this sort of thing, and because a local approach was ineffective. Who demanded that this be done? The public via the democratic process is who, not some elitist Federal Government handing down irrational decisions.

> The reason that pollution has not gotten under control in this country is because lobbyists rule the all powerful federal government, and most citizens do not see the corruption (legal and illegal) that is taking place because for a majority of states Washington, DC is pretty far away. The Federal Government has and always will cater to the special interests, and disobeying the Constitution has allowed the Federal Government to claim FAR more power than the Constitution really allows it to have.

We agree on the issue of corruption (though I don’t think public ignorance is just a matter of not being driving distance from D.C.), but the way to fix corruption isn’t by eliminating the public’s democratic ability to effect change on a national level by dismantling the Federal Government. That would exacerbate the problem by empowering private interests even more while simultaneously disempowering the public. I would suggest we eliminate corporate influence and INCREASE the public’s say in how the country is run by making elections more fair and democratic (like, say, public financing of elections).

> If corporations were forced to be chartered at the state and local level, then they would be directly accountable to local populations for their actions.

Corporations ARE chartered at the state level. There’s no such thing as a private US corporation that’s not chartered by some state government. The federal government charters only government corporations, like the US Post Office.

> This is how corporations used to operate, until the Federal Government declared that corporations had the same rights as legal persons, and thus the Federal government had sole authority to regulate them.

When did the Federal Government “declare” anything of the sort? Corporations gained legal status as persons through a variety of court decisions starting in the latter half of the 19th century. This was done at the behest of business interests looking to protect and expand their private fortunes, not some spooky, central government acting of its own volition. I agree with you that corporations are artificial and undeserving of anything approaching “rights.” But the solution here isn’t to limit the public’s ability to respond via their Federal Government. How about just passing a law that strips corporations of their rights?

> This is why local communities can protest and complain about pollution, but nothing gets done. It is impossible for The Federal Government to respond to the needs of local areas with even a fraction of the same efficiency as State and Local governments. Why is this so difficult to comprehend?

I agree that state and local governments are better equipped to deal with issues at the state and local levels. However, I fail to see how eliminating the power of the public to work collectively as a nation will do anything to help global pollution problems that require international consensus to combat. The reason the Federal Government doesn’t respond to the population is because it doesn’t represent their interests, and it was never designed to. To paraphrase Adam Smith, it is “merchants and manufacturers” (the business people of Smith’s time) who are the “principle architects” of public policy and who make sure their interests are “peculiarly attended to” in spite of the dreadful effects wrought on the general population. The Federal Govt. represents the interests of business. Why would a state or local government do any better considering the same interests control them to?

> The reason that economic inequality persists is because we have an economic policy right now which drives up inflation (and thus our money becomes less valuable) and directly interferes with the natural goings on of the free market (namely by providing corporate welfare and by artificially manipulating interest rates).

By your logic, the “great compression” (the period between the mid-1940s and late 1960s when wealth distribution was the most equitable in our history and, for the first time in American history, a genuine middle class was created) was a result of low inflation and a lack of government interference. This seems to fly in the face of history. Following your reasoning, the compression had nothing to do with cheap housing loans, strong labor unions, New Deal benefits, welfare or any other symptoms of Communist tyranny. And it certainly had nothing to do with progressive taxation like the 90%+ income tax for the top bracket during the Eisenhower era. Yes, inflation was low during this period (barring the post war era), but it was even lower during the 1920s and 1930s, when income inequality hit historical highs.

>This is what has led to the current sub-prime mortgage crisis we are facing. Government interference is the PROBLEM not the ANSWER. We do not have a free market in this country, and we haven’t had one since 1913 at the latest. ‘Federal planning’ of economics combined with out huge welfare state (thanks federal government) and debasement of our currency by taking it off of the gold standard has harmed the middle and lower classes and has actually benefited the wealthy.

Never mind that America was basically a third world country (50 years before the term was invented) before the institution of the Federal Reserve, so it had no real notable middle class to speak of. Never mind the debilitating periodic recessions that harmed working people, the effects of which have been lessened to a certain degree by monetary policy. Never mind that gold has no actual value, only socially agreed value, just like money. Is that really the Libertarian right’s solution? Should the US regress back to the 19th or 18th century and start wars over yet ANOTHER natural resource, gold? I thought oil was enough. Switching back to the gold standard would actually be DEGRADING for the environment, since gold is obtained via destructive mines. Before the Federal Reserve, the American banking system was terrible. Some bank currency wasn’t accepted at stores. Some States didn’t accept currency from other States. People used foreign currency and even tobacco since the currency was so erratic and unstable.

The Federal Reserve is obviously corrupt, and I’m certainly not a fan of central banks and the banking industry anymore than anyone (the Bible specifically forbids charging interest, BTW). There’s no doubt who’s interests the Fed really serves. But the Federal Reserve bogeyman is hardly the worst of our concerns, and reverting back to Gilded-age economics isn’t a very convincing solution to me.

Sam
12/9/07 at 7:10 pm
[…] footing. Paul has shown how extremely misinformed he is on matters of science with his solution to environmental degradation already. Perhaps we should exercise a bit of intelligent design ourselves by elected a president […]

Just a Theory: Ron Paul Doesn’t “Accept” Evolution By Manila Ryce (video) « Dandelion Salad
12/22/07 at 5:42 pm
[…] h/t: Sam (from a comment on this post.) […]

Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul « Dandelion Salad
12/23/07 at 8:56 am
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DrTsaSUFfpo
A good video explaining free market environmentalism.
Sorry Ron Paul’s video just isn’t enough.

John
12/24/07 at 10:26 am
[…] em que vivemos. A sua total fala de conhecimento científico está bem patente nas suas ideias para combater os problemas ambientais. Não é de admirar que o Dr. Paul não aceite bem a separação entre Igreja e o Estado e receba […]

A religião nas eleições americanas « Notas ao café…
01/5/08 at 10:31 pm
[…] por dentro. O que os adeptos do capitalismo propõem para resolver os problemas ambientais são «direitos de propriedade», cada metro quadrado do planeta seria de propriedade de alguém. A propriedade não garante […]

O chamamento de Evo Morales « Notas ao café…
04/28/08 at 6:11 pm

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Ron Paul on the Environment

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12 Responses to “Ron Paul on the Environment”

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