If there's one religion that most EnZedders subscribe to, it's this one: recycling. Putting on his economist's hat for a moment, Bruce Rottman uses this Guest Post to examine whether it's worth the sacrifice, and if so, for what ...

Reduce, Reuse, and…Refuse?

Guest post by Bruce Rottman

IF THE DEFINITION OF a “religion” is a set of beliefs, oriented around a faith, involving some sacrifice, taught to people with the goal to change their behavior, what is one ascendent religion today that nearly everyone agrees with?

It’s recycling.

It’s hard to find anyone who admits to being against it. Their recycling habits might occasionally lapse (like their prayer life), but they usually admit their error, with a little shame. Those blue recycling bins are omnipresent, it’s taught in schools, and we’re reminded to do it religiously by just about everyone.

So, is it a false religion? Should we recycle?

Yes and no.

That is economic talk for, “It’s complicated.” In economics, the initially correct answer typically is, “It depends.” Recycling can save resources, but often it is a psychically pleasing but utter waste of resources. How are we to decide?

One easy litmus test is this one, suggested by economist Dr. Dan Benjamin. Take your “should I recycle these?” items, place them in a transparent plastic bag, and set them on the curb. If they are gone tomorrow, you should’ve recycled them. If they are still there in the morning, they belong in a landfill. Your aluminium cans would likely disappear, but not your used Kleenex collection.

Try it again with your car: leave it out overnight unlocked with the keys on the seat. Chances are it will be long gone by morning. That's the reason we have car yards lining some of our major thoroughfares: because it's worthwhile to recycle cars.

But is recycling everything worthwhile?

THESE SIMPLE TESTS ASSUME a deeper dive into the economics of recycling. Consider two very opposite extremes:

1. You hear of a stray 7-UP can on an alleyway in Calcutta, so you hop on a 747, fly there, pick it up, toss it into a blue bin, and fly home. You have indeed saved minuscule resources (aluminum, energy) at the expense of immense amounts of non-renewable resources (oil and time being the biggest two). Your recycling clearly wasted resources.

More realistically, I did a personal test: I saved every aluminium can and glass bottle for months, put them in plastic bags on my patio, and drove them down to our city’s recycling facility. Was it efficient?

We cannot value efficiency too much, by the way, because it is a ratio of output and input values; one cannot value values too much. So everyone should agree: we should do things only if they are efficient, comparing the output vs. the input values. Seeing choices as a series of cost/benefit ratios isn’t “just an economic” view of life; it’s the view of life for all people. Economists might disagree with non-economists on how to calculate values (does a series of prayers have diminishing marginal returns?), but it’s all about subjective costs and benefits.

In doing this experiment, I spent additional time (though not much) walking to the patio to toss cans and bottles there, some petrol (maybe half a gallon), a few plastic rubbish bags, and of course, the 45 minutes of back and forth time to recycle three large bags of nonrenewable resources. I got a bit under $5 for those (each aluminium can contains just $.02 of aluminum).

Was that efficient? Not really. The cost in resources expended included the petrol — probably $3, oil to make the bags (the bags cost about $.25), and 45 minutes of my time, which, at our minimum wage of $22.70/hour, cost me $17.02. (An aside: I certainly hope my time is actually more valuable than that.) Admittedly, it turned into an economics lesson, which might have been worth, say, $20 to me. So maybe it was efficient. I did it, so yes. But only once.

2. On the other hand, in theory, nearly every good can be efficiently recycled (meaning: it saves resources) if conditions are right.

I once worked at a large school that recycled cardboard. Normally that’s just silly. Parents dropped off flattened cardboard boxes, where retired volunteers working in a large metal shed bundled them to be picked up in trucks and transported to a recycling facility 20 miles away. For a while, it was a good fundraiser for the school.

The snarky economist in me notes a few facts:those calculations don’t include the grandpas’ gas used to drive to the center, nor do they include the opportunity costs (i.e., implicit wages) of those volunteers, nor do they include the opportunity costs of the heat, the electricity, and the building itself: if the building cost $100,000 to construct, at an interest rate of 5 percent, that is $5,000 per year.

But to the school it was, or seemed, efficient. Perhaps the building had no alternative use; maybe the grandpas enjoyed both the scenic trip to the recycle-fest and the camaraderie with their buddies.

So it was efficient. Until it wasn’t. Eventually, the price of cardboard collapsed, and even with those “free” inputs, it no longer made sense, and the school stopped that fundraiser.

PRACTICALLY, SHOULD WE USE a (plastic coated) paper cup for coffee, a styrofoam cup, or a ceramic mug?

Here’s my honest and simple rule: do whatever is cheaper, assuming no negative externalities.

Which just refers to pollution, or “spillover costs.” Unless you litter, both the cardboard and the styrofoam cups will be buried, and both will last centuries, bothering no one in the oxygen and light-deprived landfill void. As long as nothing bad seeps into someone’s water supply, landfills are quite benign and we’ll never run out of them. The ceramic cup option could very well be better. Yes, its initial cost is much higher, you use energy to clean it, and it might be a pain carrying it to and fro. But the cost of each additional cup you drink will likely be lower, and perhaps it gives you not only hot coffee but warm fuzzies.

I generally put all of my paper in the rubbish, which I admit, is conveniently right next to the recycle bin. I happen to know that recycling paper is costly (involving bleaching of the pulp) and since it’s usually subsidised by governments, the true recycling cost is underestimated. Besides, tossing old paper into a landfill means buying more virgin paper, which increases the demand for pulp wood, which increases the amount of pulp wood grown in plantation forests, which helps the environment in all sorts of ways. [Unless you live near Gisborne - Ed.]

What about recycling bottles? Especially ones that are washed clean? Generally a hard no. They are made out of sand, and, of course, energy, but it seldom saves energy, and I think we have plenty of sand.

And plastic? Since 93 percent of plastic can’t be efficiently recycled, that’s another hard no, again, depending on the volume and the circumstances -- and on whether or not your plastic is barged to South-East Asia and dumped into rivers, and thence, the sea.

Certainly, batteries? I don’t know. As with most cases, it depends a lot on the scale involved, how impervious landfill linings are, the value of what we’d receive (lead, possibly cobalt), and a host of other options. Recycling Tesla batteries? Possibly. Your dead button battery? I doubt it.

The last thing we want is to make our virtue-signalling-but-inefficient recycling the modern equivalent of buying indulgences to atone for alleged environmental sins.

SO WHAT ARE WE left with?

1) If recycling makes you feel good, do it. Normally I never say that previous phrase, especially to teenagers. It might originate from the Italian late Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso, who wrote in 1573, in an eerie premonition of the 1960s, “What pleases is permitted.” Perhaps, in this situation, it’s an acceptable mantra.

But recycling doesn’t give us permission to subsidise either recycling or landfills.

2) If your neighbour tosses that polystyrene cup or dirty peanut butter jar into the rubbish, don’t tell him he’s going to NonRecycling hell. Just smile, assume he is an economist who argues that recycling usually wastes resources, and toss your own IKEA polystyrene peanuts mixed with broken wooden slats into the blue bin. Just don’t think about how much labour it will take to pick them out of the recycling conveyor belt to be tossed into the landfill.

Or place them in a clear plastic bag, and see if anyone picks it up. You never know.

* * * * 

Bruce Rottman has taught economics in secondary schools for over 40 years, and is currently Director of Brookfield Academy’s Free Enterprise Institute, in Brookfield, Wisconsin.

His post first appeared at the American Institute for Economic Research blog.

QotD: "NZ does not really have landfill sites. It has storage sites for future recycling."

"New Zealand does not really have landfill sites. It has storage sites for future recycling."
~ Eric Crampton, from his NBR article 'Waste Not, Store That'
.

Recycling is dying

Recycling is dying, and not before time.  Save the Humans has the welcome news.

Wait for the blackout

The Herald's cartoonist accurately captures the state of NZ's feeble electricity supply system [hat tip Whale Oil]:

               

And whatever current Labour Minister David Parker says (or former Labour minister David Caygill insists on), it's not true that NZ's electricity supply system isn't a shambles.  Even as Caygill, the head of the Electricity Commission, insists we aren't in crisis, he  concedes "switch-offs by lines companies may be necessary" this winter.  And even while he makes this concession, David Parker insists that "anti-blackout measures" being discussed by cabinet will make blackouts unnecessary.

These measure include such things as "buy-back being negotiated with major industrial users" -- which means cutting power to producers.  In other words, a black-out for those who produce the wealth.

It's clearly not just the electricity supply system that's in a shambles.

The only solution this government has to a problem caused largely by government is "a voluntary power conservation drive," about which we're going to hear more today.  Frankly, that's wrong-headed.

If we really want New Zealand's seriously underpowered electricity generation system fixed, we're going to have to draw attention to its enfeebled state -- and the only way politicians are going to notice it is if their own lights go off.

This isn't a time not to rock the boat, it's a time to rock the boat good and hard.  Instead of limiting power use, what we urgently need to do is lift our power use to the limit to draw attention to how close we are to those very feeble limits. 

I suggest we all pay attention to International Carbon Belch Day on June 12 -- and even join in, firing up the heater, taking frequent baths, basking in the infinite glow of numerous incandescent light bulbs, shunning recycling of any kind, and taking spontaneous road trips in gas-guzzling vehicles to increase our personal carbon output -- all in the hopes of drawing widespread attention to how the policies of successive governments have brought us to this parlous state. And about that, more here.

Snarling warmist hatred - updated

The Greens's website links to a snarling interview of Great Global Warming Swindle maker Martin Durkin conducted by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Tony Jones after the Swindle screened in Australia.  [Lubos has the same links, and an infinitely superior commentary.]

Just so you know, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a government TV station.  Just so you know, this is the same Australian Broadcasting Corporation that has on its website a game for kids that tells them they deserve to die if they use too "more than their fair share of the earth's resources": Planet Slayer's Greenhouse Calculator. 

Bear in mind that this is a game for children.  Imagine a young seven-year-old (my own mental age) clicking on the government website and finding out that (as in my case) they should have died at the ripe old age of five.  As  Diana says at Noodle Food, this is "Pure Environmentalist Evil."   On this same theme is Flibber:

    I know people like to cut environmentalists some slack and say that not everyone who considers themselves an environmentalist is a dirty hippie like Greena who wants people to live in the dirt and mud.  But that's where it always goes...
    You nice people who think, "Well, I do think litter is bad and it's not difficult to recycle, so why not?" you're keeping company with people who really do consider human beings pests who should just die out.  And slowly, it's moving from "Don't Litter" to asking children to find out when they should just die to keep from spoiling the earth.
    These people aren't joking.  They do not have anyone's best interests at heart.  They want you to die so the weeds can get on with taking over your garden.

They really aren't joking.  As Patrick Moore points out in 'Swindle,' hardcore environmentalists really do think human beings are pests -- and the level of 'contamination' of the environmental movement by misanthropy is certainly less than one part in ten.  Ethically, they're anti-human.  Politically, they're  anti-freedom.  Just look at the proposal being seriously considered in Britain to bring in rationing to limit your travel, your food and your household energy use -in other words, your entire daily life.  The "ultimate green fantasy"!  And as Bob points out, "note that this nightmarish scheme is being advanced not by the British far left, but by the Tories."

This is serious.  They really do want a Blue Planet in Green Shackles, as Czech President Vaclav Klaus titles his latest book, which has just been translated into English  (Full title: Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?).  Said Klaus at the book's launch, he is no skeptic - with him "the word "skeptic" is an understatement" -- and he's all ready to debate Al Gore, although skeptical of Big Al ever showing up.

    Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism" perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia.
    "Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality," he said.
    "In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat - this time, in the name of the planet," he added.
    Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and said he opposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems designed to reduce the impact of climate change.
    "It could be even true that we are now at a stage where mere facts, reason and truths are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda," he said.

I suspect Klaus would enjoy Carbon Belch Day -- June 12 -- when you can save the planet one Belch at a time.  Belch Day organisers want people "to waste as much energy as possible on June 12 by hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars.  The point: the group wants to help [people] break free from the 'carbon footprint guilt' being imposed by Climate Alarmists."

Blue Planet in Green Shackles by Vaclav Klaus Read more about this book...

UPDATE 1:  By the way, May 2008 was NZ's coldest May since 1992.  Just thought you'd like to know.  I wonder how NIWA's David Wratt felt when he released the figures.  [Hat tip Mulholland Drive.]

UPDATE 2: New blogger Jeff Perren (add him to your sidebar) adds another instance to the 'Blue Planet in Green Shackles' file:  America's so called Climate Security Bill -- "one of the biggest efforts to date to chain industrial civilization since its birth":

    Individuals, which is what the people who work for and invest in businesses are, have a right to use the Earth for their own benefit. Nothing in what they're doing is having nor will have the severe impact on the climate that the bill's advocates claim make it necessary.
    No one's health or well-being is going to be significantly harmed by producing CO2 at projected levels over the next 100 years. Even if it did, contra science, this bill will not do anything to change that. It will only further the takeover of the economy by the new Communists — the Greens and their partners-in-crime in Congress.

'GIANT SOLAR POWER FLOWER: London Urban Oasis' - Laurie Chetwood, Architect.

                             
London readers, listen up.  Bookmark the dates of 21st and 22nd June, because London's Tate Modern Gallery is soon to host a celebration  of one of my favourite architects: Oklahoma's Bruce Goff.   Details of the event here, here and here.

This is great news.  The man was a genius, and seriously underappreciated -- and to add to the festivities, Goff-inspired architect Laurie Chetwood won the Gold Medal at the 2007 Chelsea Flower Show with this ... Goff-inspired creation, above, and this garden which accompanies it.  Says Chetwood,

"The garden represents an imaginary concept for an open space in an urban setting, showcasing the latest environmental technologies and how they can sustain and enhance a garden.

"The focus is the Urban Oasis sculpture which harnesses daylight and windpower to recycle water. The sculpture mimics the design of an emerging flower: its 'petals' are linked to moisture sensors and are triggered to open when the garden is dry. The petals then convert sunlight to electricity for pumping water around the garden.

The things you have to say to sell a concept, eh.  (You can read more about the all-singing all-dancing giant solar power flower here.)

PS: I have no idea whether it's a functioning thing or not, but while I was Googling Chetwood I came across this "wind dam" he's proposing for Lake Lodoga outside St Petersburg. Fantastic!

                                       

The effects of global warming are already upon us

Looks like the effects of global warming are already upon us, and will soon hit the pockets of consumers and home-owners.

That is, despite there being at best only threadbare evidence of human effect on climate, and there being little evidence (if any) for the worldwide climate forecast to be catastrophic, we're already seen the all too real effect of global warming in legislation and regulation designed to limit human activity, and human industry -- and now something else is about to hit us both here in NZ, and worldwide.

The latest effect of the threadbare global warming bandwagon will be increased power and fuel prices (courtesy of the Clark Government's 'cap and trade' emissions scheme to be announced Thursday, probably to the applause of John Boy Key), and rapidly increasing worldwide food prices due in part to increasing demand from Asia and India, but also crucially because acreages normally used to produce food are being used instead to produce biofuels. Protests over rapidly rising pasta, baguette and tortilla prices have already been seen in Italy, France and Mexico respectively. As more than one British commentator has suggested, "The era of cheap food is over." If true, then we we have human-induced global warming hysteria to thank for it.

So, big and probably permanent price rises coming up then for power, for fuel and for food -- and, once the world's central bankers catch up, higher interest and mortgage prices to dampen down what they will no doubt be calling "inflation."

The effects of global warming are already upon us -- specifically, the effect of irrational behaviour in pursuit of a pathetic charade.

UPDATE 1: "Global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon and its effects can even be beneficial, according to two leading researchers." They "have looked at the work of more than 500 scientists and concluded that it is very doubtful that man-made global warming exists" and that GW itself is beneficial. Story here. [Hat tip Marcus.]

UPDATE 2: Meanwhile, while we can be assured that whatever Clark can do Key will do even wetter, The Observer has found a list of environmental and safety policies that Key's UK idol Wavy Davy Cameron is contemplating. These include:

• Household recycling to become easier by making it mandatory for all new houses to be built on land-fill sites, thus cutting out the middle man. Rubbish simply to be tipped out of the back door or first-floor windows.
• Anyone taking a long-haul flight must pay for two seats. The seat next to the passenger to be occupied by a tree, to be planted at the destination.
• All cars to be edible and consumed at end of journey.
• Carrot-and-stick approach to car pollution. Research into whether it's possible to come up with a car engine that runs on carrots and sticks.
• Everyone to wear a permanent seatbelt, which they then attach to whatever motor vehicle they get into.
• A height tax to encourage couples to have shorter children.

Expect to hear the more idiotic of these announced here soon.

UPDATE 3: Cameron's actual policies are even more absurd than the satire, if that's possible. [Hat tip No Minister].

It's not easy being sustainable, or smart.

Saving the Planet. It's not easy, is it--even if you want to 'do your bit' for Gaia--especially when emotions and politics replace reason and good hard sense. Let's face it, most people doing most 'planet-saving' things aren't doing that stuff for any actual tangible good their actions will produce, but more for what they see as the 'intrinsic value' of the sacrifice they've made for The Planet.

Think globally; sacrifice locally--and be seen doing it. That's the mantra. It's all about feeling good while doing what's been decreed as good.

But just imagine you genuinely wanted your actions to 'make a difference.' How would you know? As I've blogged here recently, if walking is less 'green' than driving, does that mean you should take the car down to the shops? When plastic bags and disposable nappies are 'better' than their paper and cloth alternatives, how do you display your 'green credentials' to your friends? Or when diesel 4WDs are more green than diesel trains, how should one go to work? Should you even go to work? What about all those old lightbulbs you need to dispose of--is it better for the landfills not to install the new feelgood models, and just sit around in the dark instead? (All examples produced by Chris Goodall recently.)

And if recycling paper uses more energy than producing new paper; if burning wood is better than recycling it; if Priuses are less energy efficient over their life time than gas guzzlers; if buses and trains are more wasteful when considering whole-of-day costs than the private vehicle fleet; if planting trees at mid- to high-latitudes is worse than cutting them down . . . then it seems that "thinking globally and acting locally" is actually more difficult than the easy smug answers might suggest.

It really isn't easy appeasing Gaia, is it? Or appeasing Gaia's smug representatives here on earth. The easy certainties that many of them want enshrined in law would do less for the planet than just letting price signals, property rights and human ingenuity do the job they're supposed to: send information on resources and markets and avoid the destruction of environments, while leaving the productive free to invent new ways of doing thing.

The problem really is that we're not being left free to work things out in the way best suited to human life on earth; instead we're being made to feel guilty for the sin of being alive, and being corralled into doing what Gaians wish we should do in pursuit of ends which are sometimes only peripherally related to human life and human wellbeing.

And the Gaians won't take no for an answer, even when their notions are proved wrong. The theory of Smart Growth is literally one of the most all-encompassing of foolishnesses--it is stupidity that literally encircles and encloses our major cities, reducing the supply of land and pushing up house prices. But as Owen McShane notes in the latest National Business Review, the green theory that many assume must be behind Smart Growth just doesn't stack up.

...Smart Growth theory has been further undermined by a recent Australian study called “Consuming Australia” by Sydney University’s Australian Conservation Foundation, using data collected by the Centre for Integrated Sustainability Analysis. You cannot get a much more PC organization than that.
...The Sydney researchers found that total transport activity – including private vehicle use, public transport and aircraft – accounts for only 10.5% of the carbon footprint of the average Australian family. This was the smallest slice of the carbon footprint “pie”. Food accounted for over 28% of the footprint. Putting everyone on a diet would have a greater impact.
...Now there’s a new campaign for Weightwatchers – “Join up and Save the Planet!”
...The Government should note that “construction and renovations” account for only 11.8% of the family’s carbon footprint – a bit more than transport, but much less than “other goods and services” at almost 30%.
...The report bluntly concludes:

If every Australian household switched to renewable energy and stopped driving their cars tomorrow, total household emissions would decline by only about 18%.

...So why do our social engineers focus on transport and construction which are such small slices of the carbon footprint pie? Again, I suspect it’s just because “They are there” – and, in particular, they are there to tax, inspect, and regulate.
...This Australian study also examined the carbon footprints of families living in different states, different cities, and in different locations within cities. The researchers probably expected to come up with support for Smart Growth claims that high-density inner-city living will help save the planet while suburban living sends us down the pathway to toast.
...Instead, they found that “place doesn’t matter.” Household income was the major variable. Families with the smallest carbon footprints are on lower incomes and live on the outskirts of town. The carbon footprint “criminals” are on high incomes, and live in “vibrant downtown communities”. Burning up all that midnight ethanol must pump out the CO2.
...The researchers had to declare that:

“Despite the lower environmental impacts associated with less car use, inner city households outstrip the rest of Australia in every other aspect of consumption. … the opportunities for relatively efficient compact living appear to be overwhelmed by the energy and water demands of modern urban living. In each state and territory, the centre of the capital city is the area with the highest environmental impacts, followed by the inner suburban areas. Rural and regional areas tend to have noticeably lower levels of consumption.

...There goes the Smart Growth neighbourhood!
...Yet the ARC’s summary report of their decisions on Proposed Change 6 simply asserts:

Urban living is more transport efficient than rural living.

...Oh, really?
...Smart Growth has always been a policy in search of justification. It started out as a means of pricing blacks and Hispanics out of white enclaves in the US. It worked but proved “inappropriate”. Then Smart Growth would “save” rural land from urban growth. There is no such thing as “productive land” so it didn’t work. Then it would save us from the oil shocks. The shocks went away. Most recently it would deliver us from global warming.
...The Australian report knocks the props out of the carbon footprint argument.
...What will they come up with next? Central planners need some excuse to push us round.

MORE from the Archives: Urban Design, Global Warming, Environment, Property Rights

"Walking does more than driving to cause global warming..."

Another paean today to the Law of Unintended Consequences, or as I've said it before: It Ain't Easy Being Green. The gentleman saying it here today is Dominic Kennedy who noted in last week's Times that "Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated." How 'bout that! Here's the argument behind the calculation:

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, [described by New Scientist as "the definitive guide to reducing your carbon footprint"] based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. "Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles adds about 0.9 kg of CO2 to the atmosphere," he said, a calculation based on the Government's official fuel emission figures. "If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You'd need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

"The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better."

Mr Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, is the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.

Catching a diesel train is now twice as polluting as travelling by car for an average family, the Rail Safety and Standards Board admitted recently. Paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic because of the extra energy needed to manufacture and transport them, the Government says.

Fresh research published in New Scientist last month suggested that 1kg of meat cost the Earth 36kg in global warming gases. The figure was based on Japanese methods of industrial beef
production but Mr Goodall says that farming techniques are similar throughout the West [although obviously not all the west].

What if, instead of beef, the walker drank a glass of milk? The average person would need to drink 420ml - three quarters of a pint - to recover the calories used in the walk. Modern dairy
farming emits the equivalent of 1.2kg of CO2 to produce the milk, still more pollution than the car journey.

Cattle farming is notorious for its perceived damage to the environment, based on what scientists politely call "methane production" from cows. The gas, released during the digestive
process, is 21 times more harmful than CO2 . Organic beef is the most damaging because organic cattle emit more methane.

Michael O'Leary, boss of the budget airline Ryanair, has been widely derided after he was reported to have said that global warming could be solved by massacring the world's cattle. "The
way he is running around telling people they should shoot cows," Lawrence Hunt, head of Silverjet, another budget airline, told the Commons Environmental Audit Committee. "I do not think you can really have debates with somebody with that mentality."

But according to Mr Goodall, Mr O'Leary may have a point. "Food is more important [to Britain's greenhouse emissions] than aircraft but there is no publicity," he said. "Associated British Foods isn't being questioned by MPs about energy.

"We need to become accustomed to the idea that our food production systems are equally damaging. As the man from Ryanair says, cows generate more emissions than aircraft. Unfortunately, perhaps, he is right. Of course, this doesn't mean we should always choose to use air or car travel instead of walking. It means we need urgently to work out how to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of our foodstuffs."

Simply cutting out beef, or even meat, however, would be too modest a change. The food industry is estimated to be responsible for a sixth of an individual's carbon emissions, and Britain may be the worst culprit.

Interesting stuff, no? Kennedy finishes up with a grab bag of eco-myths that he takes to with relish:

• Traditional nappies are as bad as disposables, a study by the Environment Agency found. While throwaway nappies make up 0.1 per cent of landfill waste, the cloth variety are a waste of energy, clean water and detergent.
  
• Paper bags cause more global warming than plastic. They need much more space to store so require extra energy to transport them from manufacturers to shops.
• Diesel trains in rural Britain are more polluting than 4x4 vehicles. Douglas Alexander, when Transport Secretary, said: “If ten or fewer people travel in a Sprinter [train], it would be less environmentally damaging to give them each a Land Rover Freelander and tell them to drive.”
  
• Burning wood for fuel is better for the environment than recycling it, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs discovered.
  
• Organic dairy cows are worse for the climate. They produce less milk so their methane emissions per litre are higher.
  
• Someone who installs a “green” lightbulb undoes a year’s worth of energy-saving by buying two bags of imported veg, as so much carbon is wasted flying the food to Britain.
  
• Trees, regarded as shields against global warming because they absorb carbon, were found by German scientists to be major producers of methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas.

The moral of the story? It's not easy appeasing Gaia. Or trying to.

Tax and tax, spend and spend: The "sustainable" Budget

More theft, more taxes, more spending, more compulsion -- that's the news from this new "sustainable" Budget: a budget that will sustain New Zealand's place at the poor end of the OECD. A budget that gives back with one hand, and grasps just as hard as ever with the other.

The only good news? The company tax rate drops to 30%, costing around $500 million a year, and there's a derisory 15% tax credit for (narrowly defined) research and development.

That's it. What's left?

• "Chewing gum" tax cuts: Cancelled.
• A new "payroll tax" on employers through the all but compulsory Kiwisaver (the derisory tax credits are not inflation indexed so over time as people earn more, notes David Farrar, employers will end up with more and more of the bill).
• A $6 billion surplus, and even more petrol taxes! Up to ten cents a litre to pay for roads, and for public transport that people don't use (a sop to keep the Greens in line).

No personal tax cuts. No discussion of private provision of roads, No recognition that real saving, private saving, is what drives growth. Just abject bloody ignorance, and more thieving.

At the end of the day, as David Farrar notes, "14% of taxpayers will now be paying the 39% tax rate, up from 5% in 2000. And those 14% will pay 53% of all income tax... The surplus for this year is projected to be $6.3 billion and over the next four years after that a total of $22.7 billion. And not one cent of it coming back to those who pay it. Tax revenue is projected to increase from $52.2 billion this year to $62.0 billion in 2010/11."

Where's the door?

UPDATE 1: NBR has the details, without all the spin.

And it's worth pointing out, to all those to whom it isn't immediately obvious, that it's not governments who make us wealthy, but it is governments who make us poor.

UPDATE 2: Labour Party hack Jordan Carter, naturally, has the spin, and spun as ineptly as always -- which makes it more transparent. Here, he says, are "the key point about today's Budget":

massive support for individual savings, to increase savings, generate deeper and more liquid capital markets (and reduce the budget surplus in a non-inflationary way), and a raft of measures (including company tax cuts, R&D research credits and infrastructure investment) to make the economy more productive over time.

Clearly he's got no more idea than Michael Cullen does about either capital markets, inflation, what makes the economy more productive over time, or what a real tax credit looks like; no idea at all how real savings -- not virtually compulsory savings for poor people over which they have no control -- a regulation bureaucratic nightmare for employers -- how real savings are the key to genuine productivity.

UPDATE 3: Craig D. puts it perfectly in a comment made at Pacific Empire:

Everything Labour does makes me despair for the future.They absolutely hate the idea of anyone doing something independent of the government.

Rather than give tax cuts, they put in place a massive welfare system, recycling tax money back to most middle class families.

Now, instead of giving our money back to make our own decisions, we are to save through another government scheme.

What is Labour’s ultimate vision? Where everyone works for, is paid by, saves with and is dictated to by the government deciding what’s best?

UPDATE 4: From Dave at Big News:

This budget is about encouraging people to save? Ummn.. no its not, it's about taking consumer demand out of the economy so the Government can spend and tax more without affecting inflation.To save, people must do one of two things: spend less or earn more. If you can't do either, it's a bit like asking someone to flush the toilet after using a long drop.

It's not easy being green.

WE ALL KNOW ABOUT food miles by now, don't we: a simplistic programme dreamed up by the European Union mandarins under which energy used to produce food is ignored in favour of energy used to transport food, with the result that more 'embodied energy' is present in food made 'virtuous' by being sanctified under an EU food miles programme -- and that unless a few NZers get off their arses now to refute this nonsense, New Zealand food with less embodied energy will be more difficult to sell to Europe in future.

'Food miles' is a metaphor for almost every green programme: a protectionists' wet dream; an accounting sleight of hand achieving the opposite of its intended result, and one that harms consumers and selected producers into the bargain -- and one that requires a large bureaucracy to administer. Truth is that the full context of most green schemes often shows a different picture to the snapshot offered by a feel-good environmental programme. It's not easy being green.

RECYCLING IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE of a feel-good programme with little tangible effect; another accounting sleight of hand that looks at the small picture, and ignores the larger context. Fact is that all the money, time and energy used in recycling is barely offset, if at all, by the very few savings in energy that are achieved by recycling. And further, notes Cato's Jerry Taylor, it's bad for the environment. Paper recycling for example:

"Fully 87% of our paper stock," says Jerry Taylor, comes from trees which are grown as a crop specifically for the purpose of paper production. Acting to 'conserve trees' through paper recycling is like acting to 'conserve corn' by cutting back on corn consumption." To cap this argument Taylor presents a National Wildlife Federation study shooing that recycling 100 tons of newspaper produces 40 tons of toxic sludge. "Thirteen of the 50 worst Superfund hazardous waste dumps were once recycling facilities," says Taylor.

The full context often shows a different picture to the snapshot offered by a feel-good environmental programme.

KYOTO? As Tim Blair notes this morning, "New Zealanders, Canadians, and Germans already know Kyoto is a crock. Now they’re joined by Turks." Is a projected 37 percent drop in GDP worth it, wonder intelligent Turks, for something that even if the science is correct, is supposedly for a prevention of warming by 0.0015 degrees C -- or, as Bjorn Lomborg repeatedly points out, "simply going to postpone warming for about six years in 2100?"

Shouldn't that bother people who think about these things?

HOW ABOUT CARBON EMISSIONS? Surely that's a simple thing to sort out isn't it? Simply pass laws reducing industrial carbon emissions -- stopping the production of new coal-burning power plants and the like -- and we're home and hosed, aren't we? Well, maybe not. First of all, if you ban or make more difficult the construction of new more efficient power plants, what kind of power plants do you think will be left pumping out power? It's not going to be the newer, cleaner plants, is it?

And second, do you know where the greatest growth in carbon emissions has been over the last decade? No idea? Here's the answer:

A recent study by the Global Carbon Project has shown a sharp rise in carbon emissions globally since the year 2000. The study said carbon emission was rising by less than one percent annually up to 2000, but was now rising at 2.5 percent per year, mostly as a result of rise in charcoal consumption and a lack of new energy efficiency gains.

The "lack of new energy efficiency gains" is what I talked about in that first point. But what's that about "charcoal consumption"? The burning of charcoal is a uniquely third world means of producing low-quality energy that is on the increase -- it is on the increase because other, more efficient means of energy production are being made more difficult and more expensive to produce and to construct, especially in parts of Asia and Africa where the increased charcoal burning has reportedly been happening.

What the third world needs is more power plants and more wealth, but the apostles of "low carbon emissions" make both impossible, and in doing so they actually make carbon emissions higher. As I've said before,

If decreasing or slowing down carbon emissions is really important to you, then I suggest you support the deregulation of energy production and the increased production of new energy -- especially in the third world.

What do you think the apostles think about that?

BUT WE CAN PRODUCE all the power we need from alternative means, say the apostles -- by means of sun and surf and wind. Well, maybe. One day. One day many, many years in the future.

Each of those has serious problems of capacity for a start, problems made clear in that both of the first two forms of energy require taxpayer subsidies even to investigate them as serious and ongoing forms of production -- here for instance is a picture of Jeanette Fitzsimplesimons in Lyttleton yesterday as part of her fatuous Climate Defence Tour, praising an experimental wave machine as something for which taxpayers should be made to pay up.

"Jeanette," says the breathless caption, "praised the wave machine as a symbol of ‘new energy vs. old energy’." What distinguishes them it seems is that 'old energy' actually produces energy, whereas the 'new energy' which we are expected to rely on once the apostles close down the 'old energy' is still experimental, still requiring your money to prop up, and barely scratching the surface of the sort of capacity required for a modern industrial nation. Said Australian PM John Howard recently, and accurately:

Let's be realistic. You can only run power stations in a modern Western economy on fossil fuel, or, in time, nuclear power."

Warned Alan Jenkins from the Electricity Networks Association two years ago,

It's very hard to invest in coal [because of Kyoto], nuclear's a sort of four letter word... hydro is suddenly becoming too hard... what's left? ...we can't do everything on windpower.

Well, what about wind power? While it's embraced almost like Gaia's virgin birth by one bunch of apostles, another spurns it with all the sem-religious, RMA-bugging NIMBYism they can muster. This news headline yesterday for example followed hard on the heels of a similar 'victory' in Makara: Spiritual argument wins wind farm case: Opponents of a wind farm planned for a ridgeline west of Hawke's Bay are celebrating after winning an Environment Court appeal.

So what's left from all this energy posturing from the apostles? Answer: More 'old energy' coal burning. If I might paraphrase myself, by trying to decreasing or slow down carbon emissions by means of bans, restrictions and reverse subsidies, the result is even more carbon emissions than would have been the consequence otherwise.

Do you think that bothers the apostles at all?

AND HOW ABOUT CARBON NEUTRALITY? Carbon neutrality, says many people, is achieved by planting trees to offset one's own naughty carbon-producing activities. Simple ... or is it? Turns out that under examination, this is less effective than first thought. From whom are the resulting 'carbon credits' bought? (Can you buy credits from yourself, like Al Bore does?) In what latitude are the trees planted? (Plant them in mid to high latitudes and they actually help increase global warming!) And are more trees better for global temperatures, or worse? (A recent climate model suggests that chopping down the Earth's trees would help fight global warming!)

[T]he model calculated that the atmosphere's carbon-dioxide levels would roughly double by 2100. This is a much greater increase than happens in a business-as-usual simulation, but it would, paradoxically, make for a colder planet. That is because brighter high latitudes would reflect more sunlight in winter, cooling the local environment by as much as 6°C. The tropics would warm up, since they would be less cloudy, but not by enough to produce a net global heat gain. Overall, [the] model suggests that complete deforestation would cause an additional 1.3°C temperature rise compared with business as usual, because of the higher carbon-dioxide levels that would result. However, the additional reflectivity of the planet would cause 1.6°C of cooling. A treeless world would thus, as he reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, be 0.3°C cooler than otherwise.

Turns out then that trees affect the world's temperature by means more complex than just the carbon they sequester, but the facile idea of carbon neutrality ignores the larger context and simply looks at the smaller picture. It's another accounting sleight of hand that makes many people feel better about their own virtue (I'm buying carbon credits, so I'm alright, Jack), but on closer inspection turns out to be another programme that won't achieve what it says it does.

Shouldn't that bother those who say it will?

BUT AT LEAST WHILE we're pondering all that, if we're driving a Toyota Prius we're at least doing good while feeling good, aren't we? Maybe not. As Fairfax County, Virginia, discovered with their fleet of hybrid cars and trucks, you do save on fuel bills with your hybrid, but when you look at the total energy cost of a vehicle, its whole 'life-cycle energy cost' -- the energy consumption from design, through manufacture, use and to final retirement and disposal -- then your Prius doesn't look half as good as your Corolla. Not even a quarter as good. Notes David Schare, on the back of a mammoth study done by an independent auto analysis group that looked at the full life cycle costs of your car:

[For a] full-size 28 mpg Toyota Avalon energy costs are $1.99 per mile, compared to $2.86 per mile for the Prius and $3.54 per mile for the Ford Escape. That means a County Prius causes 44 % more global warming than my big car, and the County’s Escape causes 78 % more global warming than my Avalon.

In further comparison, the County could have purchased Toyota Corollas that get nearly the same actual suburban mileage as the Prius, but at a true “green” life-cycle energy cost of $0.72 per mile. This means the Corolla causes one fourth the global warming than the Prius with about the same day-to-day gasoline costs.

Oops! Seems once again that looking only at the smaller picture produces different consequences than if you look a little more broadly.

Perhaps that's why, as Schnare notes elsewhere,

when Fairfax County wanted to head down the road toward reducing carbon emissions their Environmental Manager complained that he didn't have enough money to do the audit necessary to find out what their carbon footprint looked like and wasn't going to do anything on the issue, having other more immediate problems to solve. Thus, any state that claims it knows its carbon footprint ought to be asked for the basis of their estimate (and for fun, the cost of creating the estimate).

Maybe think about that next time you hear a politician tell you she wants to make the country "carbon neutral."

IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN, particularly if you want to ignore the real effects of your simplistic programmes, and the unintended consequences of your activities. Perhaps the real inconvenient truth here is that economics and property rights between them might have more to say than all the nonsensical feel-good programmes dreamed up in all the world's environmental think tanks, and promoted by all the world's politicians and former vice-presidents.

After all, economics has been defined as the science that studies infinite wants in a world of scarce resources. That must surely have something to say about things? And effective property rights under a system of common law is demonstrably the most effective method yet devised of 'internalising externalities' -- of reflecting back to owners the real environmental consequences of their activities. (See for example: "The Invisible Hand of the Market Doesn't Deliver a Sustainable Nation": True or False?)

Between them, strong property rights and real price signals are far more efficient at telling us all the real consequences of our own activities and of our own choices-- and they offer the added benefit that they're not just real rather than made-up; they're not just efficient; they're not just moral, but they're good for freedom as well.

That's not something one can say for all the silly schemes it takes to be 'green.' The biggest long-term cost of all of them is not just for the environment, it's in their cost to the human environment -- the cost to us all of shackling industry and productivity; of the time wasted in fruitless feel-good stupidity; of the larger state needed to administer all these programmes (with the various threats that implies) and in the loss of freedom to live our own lives in our own way.

As Fred L. Smith says, "The threat posed by humans to the natural environment is nothing compared to the threat to humans posed by global environmental policy." As I've said before, when they come for you they'll be carrying a clipboard, not a gun -- and the person carrying it will probably be called Jeremy.

UPDATE: Updated to add two more glaring anomalies, further tributes to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

[Cartoon courtesy The Free Radical]

Russel's State of Sanctimony speech

The Greens's Russel Norman has issued his state of the planet speech -- sorry, that's his State of the Planet Speech: Russel (with one 'l') of course has delusions of adequacy -- in which according to Stuff he gets sanctimonious about global warming, and according to David Farrar he unsurprisingly ranks his own party as the one with the best policies to counter said warming. That this is considered newsworthy is hopefully a sign we're still in the silly season, not that our media are utterly unable to think critically.

You can read Stuff's summary of Russel's warmism if you must, if you really want to hear all the nonsense he's found fit to recycle, but Zen Tiger's republication of Russel's original speech notes is far more entertaining.

LINK: Russel Norman: The war on climate change - Zen Tiger, Sir Humphrey's
Shock horror - a political party ranks itself highest - Kiwiblog (David Farrar)

RELATED: Politics-NZ, Politics-Greens, Humour

Bullshit! at Ten

Just so I don't miss it again, a friend has very kindly reminded me that Penn & Teller's celebrated TV programme 'Bullshit' screens again tonight on Prime.

Tonight's topic is 'recycling' -- something I had a go at myself some weeks back. Tune in and watch them make fun of people too worthy to survive.

If you miss it tonight, do a Google search. It's everywhere.

More mining please

When do you think this was written:

You must know that the world has grown old, and does not remain in its former vigour. It bears witness to its own decline. The rainfall and the sun’s warmth are both diminishing; the metals are nearly exhausted; the husbandman is failing in the fields, the sailor on the seas, the soldier in the camp, honesty in the market, justice in the courts, concord in friendships, skill in the arts, discipline in morals...

The person who said "in the third century AD" wins the prize. Yep, today's pessimists and are pikers compared to the doom-makers of the third century. Since then, we've mined, scraped, drilled, extracted and quarried millions and millions and millions of tons of stuff from the earth, and guess what: there's still billions of tons left, and even without recycling some of that stuff that's enough for at least another million years of extraction.

George Reisman has done the calculation. Go check his working for errors. And even with all that stuff extracted, man's ingenuity continually finds new uses for all the stuff we can extract, increasing the amount of useable stuff potentially available to us.

Despite this however, George is not entirely optimistic. The problems he sees, however, are not with resources running out, but with resources being taken out of possible production:

Our growing problems in connection with the supply of natural resources are not caused by nature but by us. We have allowed ourselves to abandon our reason and give up our freedom. We have allowed ourselves to be led by people who would have us freeze and be immobilized rather than spill some oil on snow hardly any of us will ever see or disturb the habitat of wild animals that mean nothing to us. If we allow this to continue, then where we are headed is to a world describable by these terrible words of despair [at the start of the post].

And if we chose not to allow this, not to tolerate this ...

There is no helplessness in fact. To men who use reason and are free to act, nature gives more and more. To those who turn away from reason or are not free, it gives less and less. Nothing else is involved.

I guess that's why the late Julian Simon used to all the human mind and human creativity "the ultimate resource."

UPDATE: Links and 'punchline' added.

LINK: Mining for the next million years - George Reisman's blog
The ultimate resource - Cafe Hayek

RELATED: Conservation, Environment

Nandor wants more government, less freedom

I offer you the spectacle of a self-declared "anarchist" who wants to get more government into your business. Nandor Tanczos's proposed private members' bill on waste minimisation would require every one of NZ's 250,000 businesses to:

• write a detailed waste management plan;
• have it approved by your local bureaucrats;
• risk a $40,000 fine if you don't;
• display a politically correct A3 poster espousing do-gooder government policies on recycling;
• give every customer a a politically correct flyer espousing do-gooder government policies on recycling.

Thanks Nandor. Once again, we see that the Greens instinctive answer to every fashionable concern is to call for either:

1. a ban; or
2. more meddling;
3. more bureaucrats.

The good news is that Nandor is reconsidering. A bit.

...Part 7, which requires every organisation to develop a waste minimisation plan, needs to be either removed or significantly amended. My own business experience tells me that this provision would be a significant burden to business owners.

Yes. It would.

One suggestion put to me is to clarify the law so that waste minimisation plans are not compulsory, but could be required by councils in certain cases, such as a large public events or significant building developments, as part of the consent process.

I wonder how "significant" a building development would need to be? Or how "large" a public event? I wonder who would decide?

Do yourself a favour and just try and think of any feel-good government programme like this that hasn't gone hog wild once it was introduced. Ponder the thought that the next step will be rationing the number of sheets you use to wipe your bum: sheets that have been compulsorily printed with politically correct poetry espousing do-gooder government policies on recycling. Ponder it and then do yourself a favour and make a submission against the Bill.

Submissions close on August 4. You can go here for details, but don't go there using your Firefox browser since the Parliamentary website real, really jams it up. And if you'd like some ammunition you coud do worse than have a look at these two recent 'Not PC' posts:

• Recycling - Not PC
• Cardiganned councillors get out the red armband over recycling - Not PC

The first one starts with PJ O'Rourke's point,

that when used items have real value -- Ferraris for example -- they don't need to be 'recycled,' they get sold. 'Recycled' is what happens to stuff with no value, or with so little value only a government regulation can make enough people care.

LINKS: Have your say: Waste Minimisation (Solids) Bill - Clerk.Parliament.Govt.NZ

TAGS: Environment, Conservation, Politics-NZ, Politics-Greens

Cardiganned councillors get out the red armband over recycling

Three English councils have brought or are bringing in fines for offending the prevailing public religion improper recycling: £1000 fines! -- that's $3,300! For putting your pizza box in the wrong bloody container! One of those councils, Barnet, has already announced that it will be "gathering evidence against two households for not recycling, in preparation for court action."

LibertyScott gives his opinion along with his report, "this approach by councils is simply fascist." Yes, it is. A big Sieg Heil to Barnet council, and to its confreres Harrow and Bromley .

From Not PC a few weeks ago: "PJ O'Rourke points out that when used items have real value -- Ferraris for example -- they don't need to be 'recycled,' they get sold. 'Recycled' is what happens to stuff with no value, or with so little value only a government regulation can make enough people care." And to make people care enough, these councils have apparently decided, you have to scare the fiscal bejesus out of them.

Meanwhile, NZ councils are scaring the fiscal bejesus out of residents with huge rate rises yet again to pay for "PC nuttiness."

LINKS: Latest green fascism: compulsory recycling - LibertyScott
North London residents face hefty fines in compulsory recycling scheme - GMTV
London borough turns to compulsory recycling - MRW
Recycling - Not PC
Rates rise 8pc to pay for "PC nuttiness" - NZ Herald

TAGS: Environment, Politics-UK, Politics-NZ

Recycling

PJ O'Rourke points out that when used items have real value -- Ferraris for example -- they don't need to be 'recycled,' they get sold. 'Recycled' is what happens to stuff with no value, or with so little value only a government regulation can make enough people care.

Why is 'recycling' so good? Jerry Taylor from the Cato Institute talks about recycling paper:

"Fully 87% of our paper stock," says Jerry Taylor, comes from trees which are grown as a crop specifically for the purpose of paper production. Acting to 'conserve trees' through paper recycling is like acting to 'conserve corn' by cutting back on corn consumption." To cap this argument Taylor presents a National Wildlife Federation study shooing that recycling 100 tons of newspaper produces 40 tons of toxic sludge. "Thirteen of the 50 worst Superfund hazardous waste dumps were once recycling facilities," says Taylor.

So recycling pollutes. How 'bout that. And all that crawling through garbage that you and I and the garbage collector have to do -- separating, sorting, piling -- that can't be good for the soul, can it? As a recent Sunday Telegraph item shows, it's not: outbreaks of violence are common as British householders and the collectors of their rubbish express their frustrations at the increasingly pernickety rules on sorting and separation. Grown men and women going through their used pizza cartons and food scraps like rag-pickers in search of silver -- that can't be good, can it?

And what about where all that recycling goes? As even the Minister in charge of Going Through Rubbish concedes, "The challenge in our small country, however, is to find users of recycled products so that they can be put to a good use. This is not always easy. " No. It's not. Tyres, oil and packaging get some recycling -- some. The rest? Well, as the Minister says, "This is not always easy."

So what's the financial cost of all this time wasted sorting and separating our waste? Fortunately, Tim Worstall has done some figures, and he's worked out what it costs Britain every year. It's a lot. If our own time is a consideration, then 'zero waste' it's not.

LINKS: How green bin rounds leave dustmen black and blue - Sunday Telegraph
Euro Trash - Tim Worstall, TechCentralStation

TAGS: Environment, Conservation

'Recognise rights in river' says PC

Sometimes recycling works. Here's an example in the form of a press release. The Government are about to close a deal to return the Waikato River to Tainui. The Whig The Tory has a good discussion and a link to the 1999 Maori Law Review article discussing an earlier proposal to return the Whanganui River from the perspective of common law property rights. Sample:

English common law presumed that non-tidal waterways were held by the owners of adjoining land to the centre line, with no general public right of use or access... While the popular view was that rivers are ‘public property’, there is no legal basis for that view, apart from places where the Crown retained ownership of adjoining lands eg., in national parks etc.

Quite right, as I said in a press release at the time on behalf of the Libz:

‘Give Tribe Full Ownership of River’ says Libertarianz

Libertarianz supports full ownership of the Whanganui River being transferred to the Atihaunui A Paparangi tribe - not the so-called ‘partnership’ of state and tribe the Waitangi tribunal recommends, but the full and final creation of ownership rights in this river, and in every other river, lake, forest, mountain and waterway in New Zealand.

“The main issue to me is not to whom property rights in the river are transferred to,” says Libertarianz Environment Deregulation Spokesman Peter Cresswell, “the important thing is that transferrable property rights in the river be created.”

Property rights protect the interests of the property owners – as people who have had their land confiscated should understand – and protects the environment in the process. The environment needs to be de-politicised as crucially as does the economy. Creating property rights in rivers – and getting the state out of them - would be a crucial first step.

The important words were and still are "transferable," and "property rights" -- as long as rights in the river are made both secure and transferrable -- and as long as no other existing property rights are violated -- then those rights will end up in the hands of those who value them the most, as they should be, and out of the hands of Government, where they shouldn't.

Sadly, that doesn't quite appear to be what's proposed here.

LINKS: Government set to return Waikato to Tainui - NZ Herald
Rodney Hide missteps - The Tory

TAGS: Property_Rights, Maoritanga, Libz, Politics-NZ, Environment

Obesity and recycling myths challenged

Two modern sacred cows challenged this morning: the causes of the 'obesity epidemic,' and the need to recycle.

First, Sue Kedgeley. Specifically, her obsession with what kids eat. TechCentralStation reports on

a new [American] study arrived which once again (See Kicking the Can, 7/8/05) suggests that it is not pop, but lack of exercise and family poverty that are driving up rates of childhood obesity. The study, from two researchers at the University of Alberta looked at the health, nutrition and lifestyle factors of 4,298 fifth grade school children in an effort to determine which risk factors were most important for overweight children.

Unlike so many studies that rely on estimates of height and weight -- estimates which always lead to an overestimate of both overweight and obesity -- the study actually took measurements of the kids' height and weight, as well as assessing their dietary habits including whether they ate breakfast, whether their lunch came from home or was purchased at school, whether they ate in fast food restaurants, whether there were regular family suppers, and whether supper was eaten in front of the television.

The results are startling, for they disprove so much of the contemporary "wisdom" that appears to be driving America toward a series of completely ineffective obesity policies... [Read on here]

Do you think Sue will stop her obsession with school vending machines? Yeah, right.

How about challenging another sacred cow: recycling. The Mises Blog has the argument:

Oh, I used to believe in recycling, and I still believe in the other two Rs: reducing and reusing. But recycling? It's a waste of time, money, and ever scarce resources. What John Tierney wrote in the New York Times nearly 10 years ago is still true: "Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America."

How does the author know recycling is wasteful? Simple:

I know that the costs of recycling exceed the benefits. This is the simple result of the observation that recycling doesn't return a financial profit...

What's wrong with recycling? The answer is simple; it doesn't pay. And since it doesn't pay it is an inefficient use of the time, money, and scarce resources. That's right, as Mises would have argued: let prices be your guide. Prices are essential to evaluate actions ex post. If the accounting of a near past event reveals a financial loss, the activity was a waste of both the entrepreneur's and society's scarce resources. [Read on here]

So there you go. As always, PJ O'Rourke said it better:

I have a friend, Jerry Taylor, who is the director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute... Jerry pointed out that when used items -- Ferraris, for instance -- have real value they don't need to be "recycled", they get sold. "If recycling is so great," said Jerry, how come no private individual will pay you to do it?"