Category Archives: Economics

A Christian Libertarian View on Environmental Protection

I’ve just finished reading “Faith Seeking Freedom – Libertarian Christian Answers to Tough Questions“. The authors are Dr. Norman Horn, Doug Stuart, Kerry Baldwin and Dick Clark.

It covers 12 different subjects, plus one chapter on “Christian misconceptions on Libertainism”.

Here, I’m just going to concentrate on chapter 12: “What about the Environment and Creation?”

Here are a few quotes from that chapter:

The natural world in the beginning [of Genesis] is described as a garden. Gardens are meant to be worked, and that work inherently means that the garden is incomplete.

Therefore, the destiny of the whole earth is not pure wildland, but cultivation by its inhabitants.

Now, that does not mean we should be utterly wasteful and foolish with those resources, but it also means we do not have the right to assume we know better than our neighbor how he can use those resources that he rightfully owns.

As we use the resources that God has seen fit to grant us, we should use them as mindful stewards of a divine blessing (Matt. 25:14-30). The righteous take care to leave something of value for future generations (Prov. 13:22)

When property boundaries are clear and unambiguous, neighbors can more readily hold each other accountable.

Too often, in a system where environmental regulation is provided through government, political decision making can lead to wasted resources. Under modern environmental regulatory regimes, polluters and other bad actors may even be able to defend their harmful actions legally by pointing to government licensure and compliance with relevant regulations.

In a free society, property owners would have a better chance at holding others accountable for the environmental damage that they cause.

It is important to point out that governments do not just fail to protect the environment; in fact, they are among the worst polluters. A 2020 report concluded that the United States military is the “largest single institutional consumer of hydrocarbons in the world”.

Private property owners have a strong incentive to conserve their privately owned resources. Unfortunately, when government owns and manages natural resources, there is an incentive for private parties to attempt to get as much as they can until the resource is exhausted.

It is rational to maximise profits, and for as long as human beings live in a fallen world with scarce resources, they will seek to do so.

We must recognize that some pollution is inevitable simply because of entropy.

The bigger concern, though, is hazardous waste. [Whoever damages] someone else with their pollutant, they are liable for those damages in form of a tort (a civil lawsuit). The polluter would have to pay restitution for those damages and resotre the property (or health) of the claimant.

Models of the future are massively uncertain, and their predictions of global climates and the need to “fix” the predicted issues are dangerous at best and unjust to billions at worst.

Encourage efforts that move land and resources into private hands rather than the state.

Jordan Peterson on Climate Change Hysteria

9-minute video.

From the video description:

Jordan Peterson Exposes the Environmental Movement’s Flaws In this riveting video, Jordan Peterson, a leading voice in contemporary intellectual thought, critically examines the modern environmental movement. Peterson dissects the motivations and implications behind the push for drastic environmental policies, revealing what he sees as a troubling anti-human agenda. Peterson questions the vague yet powerful concept of “the environment,” suggesting it has become a quasi-religious idol for climate change advocates. He points to extreme proposals like limiting personal flights, reducing private car ownership, and restricting meat consumption as evidence of an agenda that prioritizes ideology over practicality and human well-being.

Addressing the economic ramifications, Peterson argues that such policies disproportionately harm the poor by raising energy prices and restricting access to essential resources. He critiques the hypocrisy of environmentalists who oppose nuclear energy despite its potential to provide safe, clean power, and reduce carbon emissions.

Peterson also challenges the commonly touted scientific consensus on climate change, suggesting that the narrative is driven more by political and ideological interests than by solid science. He advocates for a balanced approach that emphasizes economic growth, technological advancement, and local environmental action as the true pathways to sustainability.

Highlighting the success of free markets and capitalism in lifting millions out of poverty, Peterson calls for policies that make energy affordable and accessible, thus enabling broader environmental stewardship.

Climate The Movie

Here it is.

Alternatively, here. Under this video on rumble.com we find the following text:

This film exposes the climate alarm as an invented scare without any basis in science. It shows that mainstream studies and official data do not support the claim that we are witnessing an increase in extreme weather events – hurricanes, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and all the rest. It emphatically counters the claim that current temperatures and levels of atmospheric CO2 are unusually and worryingly high. On the contrary, it is very clearly the case, as can be seen in all mainstream studies, that, compared to the last half billion years of earth’s history, both current temperatures and CO2 levels are extremely and unusually low. We are currently in an ice age. It also shows that there is no evidence that changing levels of CO2 (it has changed many times) has ever ‘driven’ climate change in the past.
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Why then, are we told, again and again, that ‘catastrophic man-made climate-change’ is an irrefutable fact? Why are we told that there is no evidence that contradicts it? Why are we told that anyone who questions ‘climate chaos’ is a ‘flat-earther’ and a ‘science-denier’?
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The film explores the nature of the consensus behind climate change. It describes the origins of the climate funding bandwagon, and the rise of the trillion-dollar climate industry. It describes the hundreds of thousands of jobs that depend on the climate crisis. It explains the enormous pressure on scientists and others not to question the climate alarm: the withdrawal of funds, rejection by science journals, social ostracism.
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But the climate alarm is much more than a funding and jobs bandwagon. The film explores the politics of climate. From the beginning, the climate scare was political. The culprit was free-market industrial capitalism. The solution was higher taxes and more regulation. From the start, the climate alarm appealed to, and has been adopted and promoted by, those groups who favour bigger government.
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This is the unspoken political divide behind the climate alarm. The climate scare appeals especially to all those in the sprawling publicly-funded establishment. This includes the largely publicly-funded Western intelligentsia, for whom climate has become a moral cause. In these circles, to criticise or question the climate alarm has become a breach of social etiquette.
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The film was shot on location in the U.S., Israel, Kenya and UK.
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MARTIN DURKIN

Vaccine regulator failed

Presentation by Dr John Campbell about the MHRA (18m). Basically, this is a case of regulatory capture.

Quote from the video description:

We feel compelled to conclude that the MHRA has indeed become an enabler for the pharmaceutical industry, with patient safety no longer being its primary concern. Medicines regulator failed to flag Covid vaccine side effects, and must be urgently investigated. All-party parliamentary group, (APPG) on Pandemic Response and Recovery, believe MHRA were aware of heart and clotting issues, in February 2021, but did not highlight the problems for several months

What Everyone Is Missing About the Putin/Carlson Talk

Article by Tom Luongo.

Excerpts:

What does matter is that is how Putin views this conflict. And we have to deal with it. Period.

What also matters is that those who stand behind Putin are even less patient and circumspect than he is.

In order to avoid that bigger war only the oligarch class wants, we, as people, have to accept some responsibility for it getting to this point. Without that there can be no basis for a negotiated settlement.

This conflict between the West, and this includes all of Europe, the UK as well as the US, and Russia is one with existential consequences.

What Putin said, quite clearly, is that this ball is in our court. We can either sit down and have an honest discussion of a negotiated future or we will be at war. If that is what we in the West want, it is what we will get. Putin has put his sons on the line in eastern Ukraine. Are we?

See also this article by Martin Armstrong.

Why the Carbon Hysteria is a Huge Threat to Your Personal Freedom and Financial Wellbeing

Interview of Doug Casey in International Man

Excerpts:

International Man: Western countries are leading the charge in restructuring their economies around the issue of climate change. They’re committed to a comprehensive agenda to “decarbonize” their economies by 2050.

What’s your take on this?

Doug Casey: To sum it up in one word, it’s insane. In two words, it’s criminally insane.

[. . .]

Look, this is all about politics and money, but disguised as a religious movement, which is quite clever. There’s no question that Greenism is being promoted as a new religion.

Christianity is a dead duck in Europe, and it’s dying in North America. But people need some type of religion, a replacement for Christianity, to hold on to.

People will be encouraged to treat their taxes as tithes to wash away their sins against Mother Nature—much the way they tithed the church to expunge their sins in the Middle Ages. It’s an exact analogy. They’ll buy “carbon credits” as an analog for building cathedrals and monasteries.