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January 27, 2020 04:47 pm PST

Climate denial has destroyed the libertarian movement

Leading libertarian intellectuals are now disavowing the label (Tyler Cowan says he's now a "State Capacity Libertarian") thanks to the total failure of libertarianism to cope with climate change.

John Quiggin (previously) explores how, at the start of the climate debate, libertarians advocated for "market based" solutions, like tradeable emissions credits, something dubbed "free-market environmentalism." The model had been used successfully to fight acid rain, and it was appealing to libertarians as it "would supply incentives to find the most cost-effective path toward reducing emissions."

Climate activists weren't fond of the idea, favoring instead a limit on pollution itself (this traces a similar arc to the debate on smoking, which started with "sin taxes" on tobacco but really only made progress when these were augmented with absolute prohibitions on smoking in most places and strict curbs on the sale and marketing of tobacco products).

But once emissions credits became a reality, libertarians almost unanimously rejected them, and switched from "free market environmentalism" to straight-up climate denial. As Quiggin says, the problem with tradeable emissions is that it rebuts the core tenet of libertarianism: John Locke's idea that property rights arise spontaneously from nature, rather than being created by governments hoping to achieve specific policy goals.

But more deeply, "Affluent white men who dont like being told what to do are by far the most important constituency for libertarianism. Such men would consider it a dreadful imposition to have to pay, whether directly or indirectly, for the right to drive a car or use air conditioning." Read the rest


Original Link: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/CE-yz_33mqs/galt-underwater.html

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