You Have to Admit It's Getting Better From Economic Prosperity to Environmental Quality

by Anderson, Terry L.

• ISBN13: 9780817944827
• ISBN10: 0817944826
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press

Summary

To the doomsayers who maintain that natural resources are being depleted and the environment is getting worse, Terry Anderson and his fellow contributors offer a bold retort: it's getting better all the time. They present a powerful argument that, through such established institutions as property rights, the rules of law, and limited government, economic growth andenvironmental quality will both flourish. You Have to Admit It's Getting Bettershows how, by focusing our energies on developing and protecting the institutions of freedom, rather than on regulating human use of natural resources through political processes, we can in fact have our environmental cake and eat it, too. The book offers a number of often-surprising revelations that debunk many commonly held beliefs about the future of our environment. It shows, for example, how liberalization of international trade is more likely to improve environmental quality than reduce it. It also explains how the prosperity and improved human well-being that we enjoy today are not leaving future generations worse off, but leaving them with more capital and larger stocks of natural resources. Throughout the book, the authors repeatedly show that economic growth is not the antithesis of environmental quality: rather, the two go hand in hand if the incentives are right.

Author Biography

Terry Anderson, the John and Jean DeNault Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the executive director of PERC - the Property and Environment Research Center, a think tank focusing on market solutions to environmental problems located in Bozeman, Montana, and professor emeritus at Montana State University.

Table of Contents

Tables and Figures	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
Contributors	xi
Introduction: Property Rights and Sustainable Development	xiii
Terry L. Anderson
The Skeptical Environmentalist	1	(52)
Bjørn Lomborg
Economic Growth, Technological Change, and Human Well-Being	53	(30)
Indur M. Goklany
Income and the Race to the Top	83	(26)
Bruce Yandle
Maya Vijayaraghavan
Madhusudan Bhattarai
Globalization, Free Trade, and Environmental Quality	109	(34)
B. Delworth Gardner
Population Growth, Economic Freedom, and the Rule of Law	143	(30)
Seth W. Norton
Appendix	170	(3)
The Relation Between Net Carbon Emissions and Income	173	(30)
Robert E. McCormick
Index	203