Megan McArdle

Guest post by Laura McKenna, former political science professor, blogger, and freelance writer. 

With the cutbacks in school funding, many school districts are creating education foundations to supplement programs in the schools. 

Local education foundations (LEF) are 503(c)(3) groups formed in local school districts. They usually provide funding for auxiliary educational activities or after school activities, like Lego Leagues, music programs, or special field trips. Unlike PTA groups, they tend to focus on gathering large scale donations from local businesses or corporations. 

There are wide variations in how much these groups can collect based on the wealth of the community. In a report in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Rob Reich points to two communities and their foundations. In wealthy Woodside, CA, which has a median household income of $171,000, the foundation collected $10 million between 1998 and 2003. A nearby town with an average income of $45,000 does not have a foundation, but it could use one to provide basic necessities for the school like textbooks and classroom supplies. 

Reich also writes that individuals and business who donate to these foundations receive tax breaks. In other words, government is subsidizing foundations that channel money to wealthy school districts. The poor school districts that are unable to create these foundations receive nothing. Ultimately, charitable donations are not going to areas where it is needed most.

In Slate magazine in November, Helaine Olen described the impact of wealthy school foundations in California.

One elementary school is so adept at getting its wealthy parents to open their checkbooks that it is able to spend an additional $2,000 per student on enrichment activities, which include employing multiple reading and instructional assistants, as well as classes in chorale music, marine science, and art. But at another Santa Monica-Malibu Unified school, located just a few miles away, a significant percentage of the kids come from economically disadvantaged homes and the local PTA can't even muster up an additional $100 per child, leaving the students to make do with a truncated music program, a few art classes, and one measly instructional assistant. 

A couple of years ago, I was a trustee on our town's school foundation. The total budget for the foundation was extremely small, in part because the foundation was only two years old. The bigger problem was that we lived in a town of modest means. The foundation competed with the PTAs and the baseball teams for $25 donations from the local pharmacy and bagel shop. There were no corporate headquarters in town or hedge fund managers to milk for cash. 

Still, the foundation did a lot of good even with its tiny budget. It provided money and parental support for a Lego League and a small school garden. It brought in a different set of parents to the school; it attracted people who were more comfortable in a corporate board room, rather than a PTA bake sale. As a big believer in the power of parental involvement in schools, I have to cheer for this development. 

Foundations are part in parcel with other efforts in wealthier communities to supplement education. The local middle schools in our area send kids on three day trips to Boston or DC and ask parents to cover the tab. One town asked that each parent pay over $900 per child.

Infusions of cash from parents, PTAs, and foundations are invisible donations to schools, which may be increasing school inequity. Both Reich and Olen are concerned about this development. At the same time, these foundations are also a new means for parental involvement and have the potential to bring in money into starving school districts, as well as wealthy districts. 

Since this is a blog post, rather than a proper article, I have decided to take the coward's way out of this argument and let the readers decide. Tell me what you think. 

Guest post by Laura McKenna, former political science professor, blogger, and freelance writer.

I became fascinated with the romance novel industry this spring.

It all began when a friend recommended that I check out a romance novel with an autistic hero,  The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie. For multiple reasons, I found this book pretty horrifying. In order to purge my mind of this book, I decided that I had to read a different book pronto. Based on recommendations by Amazon readers, I downloaded In Bed with a Highlander and two other books, by Maya Banks, while sitting poolside on vacation in Puerto Rico.

I blogged about these books in a rather disdainful manner and was promptly smacked down by my readers, many of whom are highly educated women. They told me that I was unfair. They gave me a whole lesson about the academic journals that are devoted to the subject. They pointed me to Mary Bly, an English professor at Fordham, who writes best sellers under the pen name, Eloisa James. I learned about websites, like Smart Bitches, Trashy Novels. 

The Romance Novel industry is big business for publishers. According to the Romance Writers of American website, romance novels brought in $1.4 billion in sales in 2010. They far outperform other genres of literature, including religious/inspirational books, mystery novels, science fiction and classic literary fiction. 

Just as I was getting this education, Fifty Shades of Grey exploded. I read it. OK, I wasn't impressed with the quality of the writing. I was equally annoyed at some of the commentary on the book that tried to determine what the success of this book says about the status of feminism. 

I am, however, impressed with the sales figures for this book. The book sold 10 million copies in six weeks. It completely dominates (heh) the New York Times best sellers lists. Last week, the author signed copies of the book at our local Barnes and Nobel. At 9am, a line of people wrapped around the building waiting for bracelets for that evening's signing. 

Romance novels have always been a big sellers. They have a large, devoted following, even among highly educated women. The 50 Shades books hit a chord with women, because they take the traditional romance novel to a different level. There's an added level of naughtiness, a curiousity about a life style, and a dollop of materialism. Smart women are reading, writing, and buying these books. They might be reading them in the privacy of their e-readers, but they are surely reading them.

My spring reading list taught me to hold back my judgmental side and appreciate this subculture for what it is. Fun. 

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Guest post by Laura McKenna, former political science professor, blogger, and freelance writer. 

After parents first receive the news from a doctor or a teacher that their child is on the autistic spectrum, there is an inevitable period of grieving as they process the news. They must accept the fact that their child will face serious challenges and may miss out on the milestone events -- a home run on the Little League game, a driver's license, the prom -- that other parents proudly post on their Facebook page. 

Most parents get over it. The child will have his own achievements and will reach different milestones, which are treasured as much as the traditional ones. Parental love and pride pushes aside the devastation. 

However, once the parent overcomes that grieving process, they have to endure a lifetime of smaller cuts. The therapy, which is so necessary for the child's success, is very expensive. Parents will fight insurance companies and school districts to cover the costs. Often, they are unsuccessful, and they must deplete family bank accounts. They face hostile school districts and community members who accuse the family of stealing their children's money. Families become drained both emotionally and financially. 

Working on their children's behalf becomes a full-time job. One parent, often the mother, either stops working or works less hours,  in order to manage the educational and therapy of the child. She must shuttle the child long distances to find the right services. She must navigate the health care bureaucracy. She must meet frequently with teachers and constantly negotiate with the school district to get the therapy that their children need. 

In an article in USA Today, Ricardo Dolmetsch, an associate professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, says his son's autism diagnosis has changed both his personal and professional life.

This work was made more difficult, Dolmetsch says, by the fact that caring for a child with a disability is a full-time job. Although his wife, neurobiologist Asha Nigh, supports his research, such as through managing projects and writing grant proposals, she has put her own scientific career on hold in order to care for their son and his brother, age 7. In his opinion, Dolmetsch says, his wife has earned an honorary doctorate "in getting insurance coverage for stuff."

"The finances of autism are brutal," Dolmetsch says. "The amount of continuous care these kids need is a lot. ... The only thing that works at all are behavioral treatments," which, depending on the state and one's health plan, may not be covered by insurance, he says. "They're very intensive... and they're horrifyingly expensive."

Dolmetch's experiences are not unique. A recent study looked at cost of autism on families. The research was conducted by David Mandell, associate director of the Center for Autism Research at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and associate director of the Center for Mental Health Policy and Services Research at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. 

Mandell found that mothers of children with autism earned, on average, less than $21,000 a year. That was 56 percent less than mothers whose children had no health limitations and 35 percent less than mothers whose children had other health limitations.

All this work makes a real difference for the child. A study coming from Columbia found that kids who outgrew many of their autistic characteristics received early, intensive therapy, which was facilitated by parents with more education and financial wherewithal.

As the reported cases of autism have soared in recent years, so have the overall costs. Some estimate that autism costs society $137 billion per year. And nobody wants to pick up that big tab. Autism falls into a black hole between medical and educational services. Insurance companies expect schools to pay, and schools want the insurance companies to pay.

Parents who have the educational and financial resources can provide these therapies for their children. They pay for it themselves. They move to wealthier school districts. They hire lawyers. They spend hours on the phone with insurance companies. They network with other parents to learn about new doctors and compare services in other school districts. Parents who don't have those resources are unable to get the right help for their children. 

What should be done? My co-blogger, Dr. Manhattan, will follow up with one proposal. 

Guest post by Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and regular contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy

No environmental issue is more polarizing than global climate change.  Many on the left fear increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases threaten an environmental apocalypse while many on the right believe anthropogenic global warming is much ado about nothing and, at worst, a hoax.  Both sides pretend as if the climate policy debate is, first and foremost, about science, rather than policy. This is not so. There is substantial uncertainty about the scope, scale, and consequences of anthropogenic warming, and will be for some time, but this is not sufficient justification for ignoring global warming or pretending that climate change is not a serious problem.

Though my political leanings are most definitely right-of-center, and it would be convenient to believe otherwise, I believe there is sufficient evidence that global warming is a serious environmental concern.  I have worked on this issue for twenty years, including a decade at the Competitive Enterprise Institute where I edited this book. I believe human activities have contributed to increases in greenhouse concentrations, and these increases can be expected to produce a gradual increase in global mean temperatures. While substantial uncertainties remain as to the precise consequences of this increase and consequent temperature rise, there is reason to believe many of the effects will be quite negative.  Even if some parts of the world were to benefit from a modest temperature increase -- due to, say, a lengthened growing season -- others will almost certainly lose.

Many so-called skeptics note that environmental activists and some climate scientists exaggerate the likely effects of anthropogenic warming, distorting scientific findings and overstating the extent to which contemporary events (hurricanes, etc.) may be linked to human activity to date.  But the excesses of climate activists and bad behavior by politically active scientists (and the IPCC) do not, and should not, discredit the underlying science, or justify excoriating those who reach a different conclusion.  Indeed, most skeptics within the scientific community readily accept the basic science.  They contest the more extreme climate projections, but accept the basic scientific claims. Take, for example, Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute.  In one of his recent books, Climate of Extremes: The Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know (co-authored with Robert Balling, another prominent "skeptic"), Michaels readily acknowledges that there is a warming trend and that human activity shares some of the blame.

The position espoused by Michaels, Balling and most (but not all) skeptics is that anthropogenic global warming is occurring, but it is more of a nuisance than a catastrophe.  Some even argue that the net effect of climate change on the world will be positive, due to increased growing seasons, less severe winters and the like.  Were I a utilitarian, and if I placed substantial faith in such cost-benefit studies, I might find these arguments convincing, but I'm not and I don't.  Even if these skeptics are correct that global warming will not be catastrophic and that the net effects in the near-to-medium term might be positive, there are still reasons to act.

Accepting, for the sake of argument, that the skeptics' assessment of the science is correct, global warming will produce effects that should be of concern.  Among other things, even a modest increase in global temperature can be expected to produce some degree of sea-level rise, with consequent negative effects on low-lying regions.  Michaels and Balling, for instance, have posited a "best guess" that sea levels will rise 5 to 11 inches over the next century.  Such an increase in sea levels is likely manageable in wealthy, developed nations, such as the United States.  Poorer nations in the developing world, however, will not be so able to adapt to such changes.  This is of particular concern because these effects will be most severe in those nations that are both least able to adapt and least responsible for contributing to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

It is a well established principle in the Anglo-American legal tradition that one does not have the right to use one's own property in a manner that causes harm to one's neighbor.  There are common law cases gong back 400 years establishing this principle and international law has long embraced a similar norm.  As I argued at length in this paper, if we accept this principle, even non-catastrophic warming should be a serious concern, as even non-catastrophic warming will produce the sorts of consequences that have long been recognized as property rights violations, such as the flooding of the land of others.

My argument is that the same general principles that lead libertarians and conservatives to call for greater protection of property rights should lead them to call for greater attention to the most likely effects of climate change.  It is a well recognized principle of common law that if company A is flooding the land of person B, it is irrelevant whether company A generates lots of economic prosperity for the local community (including B).  A's action would still violate B's property rights, and B would be entitled to relief of some sort.  By the same token, if the land of a farmer in Bangladesh is flooded, due in measurable and provable part to human-induced climate change, why would he be any less entitled to redress than a farmer who has his land flooded by his neighbor's land-use changes? Property rights should not be sacrificed as part of some utilitarian calculus.  Libertarians readily accept this principle when government planners violate property rights in the name of economic development (see e.g., Kelo v. New London).  Yet they seem to abandon their commitment to property rights when it comes to global warming.

I readily recognize that there is, as yet, no international mechanism that adjudicate warming-based disputes, and I am quite sympathetic to those who believe any international entity capable of adjudicating such disputes would do more harm than good, but this does not negate the principle that global warming is, as best we can tell, likely to cause harms that should be addressed.  The question is how to do it.

Accepting that global warming is a serious problem does not require the embrace of federal regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, as currently undertaken by the EPA.  I have been quite critical of these efforts, which I believe are based on a misinterpretation of the Act by the Supreme Court.  CAA regulation will be extremely costly but will not produce emission reductions sufficient to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.  The pork-laden cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House of Representatives would not be much better.  What then should we do?

If the effects of global warming are to be mitigated, it is necessary to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at a reasonable level.  The emission reductions necessary for this to be achieved are enormous, and far beyond the capability of existing technologies.  Just to reach a reasonable intermediate target the U.S. would have to reduce its emissions to levels not seen in 100 years, and reduce per capita emissions to levels not seen since Reconstruction.  And even this would not be enough, for if equivalent emission reductions are not made elsewhere, it would all be for naught.  As I explain in the first part of this paper, dramatic technological innovation is necessary to address the threat of climate change.

As Roger Pielke Jr. persuasively argues in his book The Climate Fix, nations will not decarbonize their economies until it is relatively cheap and easy to do so.  Therefore, those who are concerned about climate change, as I am, should be pursuing policies that will make it cheaper and easier to adopt low-carbon technologies.  What should these policies be?  I've suggested several.

First, the federal government should support technology inducement prizes to encourage the development of commercially viable low-carbon technologies.  For reasons I explain in this paper, such prizes are likely to yield better results at lower cost than traditional government R&D funding or regulatory mandates that seek to spur innovation. 

Second, the federal government should seek to identify and reduce barriers to the development and deployment of alternative technologies.  Whatever the economic merits of the Cape Wind project, it is ridiculous that it could take over a decade for a project such as this to go through the state and federal permitting processes.  This sort of regulatory environment discourages private investment in these technologies.

Third, I believe the United States should adopt a revenue-neutral carbon tax, much like that suggested by NASA's James Hansen.  Specifically, the federal government should impose a price on carbon that is fully rebated to taxpayers on a per capita basis.  This would, in effect, shift the incidence of federal taxes away from income and labor and onto energy consumption and offset some of the potential regressivity of a carbon tax.  For conservatives who have long supported shifting from an income tax to a sales or consumption tax, and oppose increasing the federal tax burden, this should be a no brainer.  If fully rebated, there is no need to worry about whether the government will put the resulting revenues to good use, but the tax would provide a significant incentive to reduce carbon energy use.  Further, a carbon tax would be more transparent and less vulnerable to rent-seeking and special interest mischief than equivalent cap-and-trade schemes and would also be easier to account for within the global trading system.  All this means a revenue-neutral carbon tax could be easier to enact than cap-and-trade.  And as for a broader theoretical justification, if the global atmosphere is a global commons owned by us all, why should not those who use this commons to dispose of their carbon emissions pay a user fee to compensate those who are affected.

Fourth and finally, it is important to recognize that some degree of warming is already hard-wired into the system.  This means that some degree of adaptation will be necessary.  Yet as above, recognizing the reality of global warming need not justify increased federal control over the private economy.  There are many market-oriented steps that can, and should, be taken to increase the country's ability to adapt to climate change including, as I've argued here and here, increased reliance upon water markets, particularly in the western United States where the effects of climate change on water supplies are likely to be most severe.

I recognize that a relatively brief post like this is unlikely to convince many people who have set positions on climate change.  I can already anticipate a comment thread filled with charges and counter-charges over the science.  But I hope this post has helped illustrate that the embrace of limited government principles need not entail the denial of environmental claims and that a concern for environmental protection need not lead to an ever increasing mound of prescriptive regulation.  And for those who wish to explore these arguments in further detail, there's lots more in the links I've provided throughout this post.

Guest post by Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and a regular contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy.

It can be a bit lonely working on environmental issues from the "right" side of the political spectrum. Environmental academics and activists rarely have much patience (let alone sympathy) for principles that would limit the scope of government power and few conservatives or libertarians take environmental issues seriously. Some of my friends on the right seem to think that any environmental problem the market cannot magically solve must be a hoax. There's no doubt many environmental threats have been exaggerated, and the capacity of traditional regulatory institutions to address environmental concerns is often oversold, but serious environmental problems remain, and they should be addressed. Yet in the political sphere, those on the right either oppose every environmental measure with a reactionary fervor or they insist that whatever we do, we just have to make it cost a bit less. Neither is a satisfactory response. Blind opposition to the Sierra Club's agenda does not an environmental policy make. Nor is there a compelling case for always doing environmental initiatives on the cheap. Across the aisle, unfortunately, concerns for regulatory costs and limitations are viewed with equal suspicion.

As illustrated in the past three posts, much of my work explores the possibility and potential of a "pro-environment" policy agenda that is consistent with principles of limited government. This sort of approach is often characterized as "free market environmentalism" or "FME." This moniker may be a bit of a misnomer in that it emphasizes the "market" rather than the underlying set of institutions upon which markets - and sound conservation - both depend, but it certainly communicates the idea of trying to reconcile free enterprise and environmental protection through the recognition and protection of property rights in environmental resources.

This approach cuts against the grain of conventional environmental policy. Suggestions for dramatic reform of environmental laws is regularly characterized as "anti-environmental." Part of the problem is the standard fable of federal environmental regulation which recounts an overly romanticized view of the federal government's role in environmental protection. Based on this fable, many believe any effort to curtail federal regulatory authority, expand protection of property rights, or create greater state flexibility is an attack on environmental protection. But it ain't necessarily so.

According to the standard fable, post-war environmental conditions got inexorably worse until the nation's environmental consciousness awoke in the 1960s and demanded action. State and local governments were environmental laggards, according to this story, and only the federal government was capable of safeguarding ecological concerns. Events such as the 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River, memorialized in Time magazine with this picture, are pointed to as support for this traditional account. This fire, which helped spur passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act, is constantly cited as evidence of how bad things were before the federal government got involved.

Yet the standard fable is just that, a fable - a fictionalized account with some truth, but fiction nonetheless. Let's start with the 1969 fire. There was a fire on the Cuyahoga River in June 1969, Time magazine did run a photo of a fire on the Cuyahoga, and the story of the fire did help spur passage of the CWA. But that's about where the truth ends. The fire was actually a minor event in Cleveland, largely because river fires on the Cuyahoga had once been common, as they had been on industrialized rivers throughout the United States, throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But river fires were costly and posed serious risks to people and property, prompting local governments and private industry to act. The fire was not evidence of how bad things could get, but a reminder of how bad things had been.

Further, the June 1969 fire was far smaller and less significant than the fires of years past. Where there had been some major infernos on the Cuyahoga in years past, the 1969 fire was not among them. The fire burned for less than thirty minutes, and was out before the cameras arrived. (Here's the closest thing to a picture of that fire.) And that picture in Time magazine? It was not of the 1969 fire but of a fire from 1952. Apparently the editors of Time felt the need to dramatize their story of environmental ruin with a picture of a real fire, so they used the best picture they could find, even if it was not of the fire featured in their story. [For those interested, here is an extensive treatment of this history.]

The problems with the standard fable extend beyond the story of one river. While there were plenty of serious environmental problems in the 1960s, it's wrong to suggest everything was getting inexorably worse until the federal government got involved. Just as the problem of river fires had gotten better, not worse, prior to the 1969 Cuyahoga river, many environmental indicators were improving before the enactment of the major federal environmental laws. According the Environmental Protection Agency's first national water quality inventory in 1972, levels of some key pollutants had been declining significantly in the decade prior to enactment of the CWA. Ambient concentrations of some air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, had declined substantially before enactment of the federal Clean Air Act. Wetland loss rates plummeted before the extension of federal regulatory protection. And so on. Not every trend was positive, to be sure, but many were. In particular, those environmental concerns that were most obvious, understandable, and costly were improving -- largely due to a combination of state, local and private efforts - whereas emerging or less-well understood problems were not. In some cases federal regulation augmented and enhanced these preexisting efforts, but in other areas it imposed redundant or excessive controls that crowded out more locally tailored efforts. (For more on these points, see here and here.)

None of this means that all federal environmental regulation was unnecessary or unwise. There are some environmental problems that state and local governments are unwilling or unable to address on their own. But, contrary to the standard fable, federal environmental regulation was not always necessary or an improvement over the available alternatives. Among other things it had the effect of dampening innovation and experimentation in environmental protection, encouraging a "one-size-fits-all" approach to some environmental problems that too often becomes "one-size-fits-nobody." And if there is to be renewed experimentation and innovation in environmental policy, there needs to be a recognition that not all environmental policy decisions are best made in Washington, D.C. My own proposal for how to encourage greater environmental innovation can be found here.

In my view, greater state flexibility is a necessary, but not sufficient, for meaningful environmental reform. Environmental problems are hard, and the best solutions are not always apparent. Even where there is a broad consensus on the desirability of a particular policy approach, questions of implementation and design remain. Experimentation and innovation are necessary to discover how best to get these details right. I believe that greater reliance on property rights and market institutions will lead to more effective and equitable environmental protection, but until such approaches are tried, the claim is speculative. Only by trying new approaches can we learn which measures best succeed, or fail. I believe property-based approaches will emerge as the best (or least bad) approach to many environmental problems, but we will not know for sure until we try. And unless one is truly satisfied with current approaches to environmental protection (and few are), there is no reason not to let the experiments begin.

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Guest post by Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and a regular contributor to the Volokh Conspiracy.

In my past two posts I've made a brief case for approaching environmental problems from a property rights perspective. In the first post I noted that Garrett Hardin identified private property (or something formally like it) as a solution to the "tragedy of the commons," and suggested that this sort of approach has been under-utilized in modern environmental policy. In a second post I discussed how the recognition of property rights in fisheries have, in fact, prevented the tragedy of the commons in marine fisheries. This is because transferable property rights, where properly defined and effectively enforced, align an owner's incentives with the value of the underlying resource. Fisheries are in trouble the world over, but property-based management regimes are a demonstrated way to prevent overfishing and fishery collapse.

The creative extension of property rights to ecological resources could help address many environmental problems. Particularly in the case of natural resources, property rights are a viable and demonstrated means of enhancing sustainability, particularly when compared to the available political alternatives. For those interested in more on this general approach, I have two articles which discuss this general approach at greater length: "Free & Green: A New Approach to Environmental Protection" and "Back to the Future of Conservation: Changing Perceptions of Property Rights and Environmental Protection." Work by others along these lines can be found on the website of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), a Bozeman-based think tank at which I am a senior fellow.

At the same time there is increasing evidence that a failure to respect and protect property rights undermines environmental stewardship, particularly on private land. This is important in a country like the United States in which a majority of land is privately owned. This problem is most evidence in the context of endangered species. A majority of those species listed as endangered or threatened rely upon private land for some or all of their habitat. If these species are not saved on private land, they may not be saved at all. Yet the Endangered Species Act, in effect, punishes private landowners for having maintained their land in a way that is beneficial for listed species. The end result, as empirical research has shown, is a decline in endangered species habitat on private land. Greater protection of property rights could actually enhance species conservation, as I explain here. (And for more on the Endangered Species Act in particular, see this book.)

Whatever the benefits of property rights for environmental protection, they are no panacea. Where property rights are a particularly effective way of aligning incentives for resource conservation, the application of property-rights approaches to pollution problems is more difficult. In principle, a commitment to property rights should entail a commitment to protecting people and their property from unprivileged or unconsented to invasions. Imposing waste or emissions on another's land should be recognized as a violation of their rights. In practice, however, this can be difficult to do. Whereas it may be relatively easy to adjudicate disputes between neighboring landowners, such as when one neighbor's activities generate odors or smoke that interfere with the other, it is more difficult to address those pollution problems that involve numerous parties on either side of the equation, particularly if one believes tort litigation, in the form of common law nuisance actions, is the best way to address pollution problems. I explore these problems in greater depth in this paper forthcoming in Critical Review.

While property-based environmental strategies have their limitations, they should not be overstated. Quite often, "markets" or private enterprise are blamed for environmental problems that have other roots. Nobel laureate Ronald Coase noted this phenomenon in his seminal essay, "The Problem of Social Cost"), when he commented on those who blame nuisances, environmental and otherwise, on market failure.

When they are prevented from sleeping at night by the roar of jet planes overhead (publicly authorized and perhaps publicly operated), are unable to think (or rest) in the day because of the noise and vibration from passing trains (publicly authorized and perhaps publicly operated), find it difficult to breathe because of the odour from a local sewage farm (publicly authorized and perhaps publicly operated) and are unable to escape because their driveways are blocked by a road obstruction (without any doubt, publicly devised), their nerves frayed and mental balance disturbed, they proceed to declaim about the disadvantages of private enterprise and the need for Government regulation.

Coase's immediate point is that problems blamed on private markets often have political roots, such as when the government authorizes or encourages environmentally destructive behavior. Pollution resulting from government subsidies for favored industries is a good example. More broadly, this passage suggests it is important to consider the underlying institutional arrangements when diagnosing environmental ills. Consider the tragedy of the commons scenario discussed before. Even if the relevant resource users are for-profit corporations, it would be a mistake to label a commons problem as "market failure" or evidence of the environmental rapaciousness of free enterprise. The reason for the tragedy of the commons has little to do with capitalism or corporate entities and everything to do with the underlying institutional arrangements, and the lack of property rights in particular.

Environmental problems are difficult, and typically defy easy solution. Though I believe in property-based solutions to many (if not most) environmental problems, the viability of such approaches should not be oversold. At the same time, the environmental limitations of property rights and markets should not be overstated, particularly in comparison to the viable regulatory alternatives. In environmental policy we rarely have the option of pursuing a clearly identifiable "ideal" approach. Rather, our choice comes from the collection of second-best (and third-best, fourth-best, etc.). The question is not which approach is perfect, but which approach is better (or not as bad) as the others.

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