>Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 16:12:46 -0500
>Reply-To: Ellen Stein <estein at EMERALD.TUFTS.EDU>
>Sender: CONSLINK - The Conservation Network
><CONSLINK%SIVM.BITNET at VTBIT.CC.VT.EDU>
>From: Ellen Stein <estein at EMERALD.TUFTS.EDU>
>Subject: Alternatives to "Free Market Environmentalism" Source Search
>To: Multiple recipients of list CONSLINK
><CONSLINK%SIVM.BITNET at VTBIT.CC.VT.EDU>
>
>"To the extent that economic thinking is based on the market, it takes the
>sacredness out of life, because there can be nothing sacred in something
>that has a price." E.F. Schumacher
>
>
>Society today is quick to rely on the efficiency of the market system in
>allocating goods and services to the nation. In many cases the market has
>proved to be an efficient machine in its allocation of the goods people
>want and for which they are willing to pay a price. There are however
>some "goods", primarily public goods like beauty, health and cleanliness
>that have no price tag and are therefore mostly undersupplied in the
>market place and create a market failure of sorts, or inefficiency. There
>are a growing number of "free-market environmentalists" that foresee the
>only way to preserve these public goods is to assign them a monetary
>value. Firstly I assert, and will discuss ethically, that this is an
>impossibility (although we do it today through cost-benefit analysis) and
>discuss the risk of reliance on economic-thinking and privatization
>pervading the whole of society; secondly, I will discuss the issue of
>inequity if we were to rely on the market to distribute these resources
>and in turn how to place sustainable limits on the consumption of these
>resources without assigning a fee; and thirdly, provide some case-study
>examples of alternatives to market-based environmental policymaking with
>relation to public land use, specifically, national parks and/or national
>forests. We must resist the sacrifice of natural resources to economic
>growth and the perpetuation of this short-sighted market-based approach to
>a healthy economy and a healthy environment. For much more exists in the
>formula of a prosperous society than a sole reliance and emphasis on
>economics. This study in itself is incomplete in environmental
>policy-making.
>
>** Conslink subscribers,
>
>The above is the subject of a paper I am writing for which I need
>additional sources for research and case-study examples. If you know of
>any agency, organization, region, state, country, or individual who/that has
>taken initiative in proposing and documenting success stories of
>alternatives to "user-fees" for example, to raise revenue for public
>lands and limit consumption of the resource (i.e. manage overuse of a
>national forest by hikers) I would be thrilled to know about them. Please
>send any ideas on any part, but especially public land-use related, of the
>above problem statement to me:
>
>estein at emerald.tufts.edu
>
>Thank you very much!

This posting on CONSLINK is so relevant to our previous discussion on how
to support the environment that I'm taking the liberty of intruding on the
flow of bird news again. Mea culpa. If any of you can help her with
examples, that much better.


Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound email: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416