One of the barriers to finding solutions to global warming is the insistence of political conservatives and libertarians that their right to burn as much fossil fuel as they want cannot be regulated. Since nobody "owns" the atmosphere, we have always treated it as an open sewer for our tailpipe and smokestack emissions. The sky seems infinite. Carbon dioxide is odorless and colorless. Who is it hurting, and what can they do about it? Would conservatives and libertarians have a different opinion if they understood physics and realized that their property rights were being taken without due process or just compensation?
There is a strong conservative/liberal split in acceptance of the reality of human-caused global warming among the general population with limited levels of scientific literacy. But within the serious scientific community this political divide doesn't exist. There is overwhelming agreement among scientists of all ideological stripes that most, if not all, of the rapid heating is attributable to greenhouse gas pollution. Indeed, as many as 98% of the scientists who publish the most climate research have come to the same conclusion: the Earth is getting hotter and humans are the primary cause.
Members of my own scientific discipline -- physics -- are in strong agreement. The observational and theoretical groundwork for global warming predictions came from 19th-century giants in our field. According to our leading professional organization, the American Physical Society, "The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring."
The most vocal denial of global warming physics comes from political pressure groups such as the Heartland Institute, which describes itself as a libertarian organization that promotes "free-market solutions." Their list of "global warming experts" includes a handful of physicists who don't like the APS "incontrovertible" statement, but tend to publish their objections in newspapers, not scientific journals.
Physics Today, our most widely circulated journal, recently published an article on the fundamental physical principles that cause global warming. The author, Prof. Raymond Pierrehumbert, describes how particles of radiant heat energy, called infrared photons, are blocked by carbon dioxide molecules and prevented from escaping to space. They heat up the air instead, and the warmer air sends some of the heat right back to the surface.
Our atmosphere has a natural cooling capacity that keeps our planet temperate and habitable. We are gumming it up with our pollution. It's as if we had an expensive car, and we were dumping wastewater into the radiator, and then ignoring the warning light that was telling us our engine is overheating.
Ironically, the legal theories of libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, a co-founder of the Cato Institute and coiner of its name, may hold the key. Rothbard was a proponent of the homestead principle, by which unowned resources -- like prairie wilderness, mineral riches, and the cooling capacity of the air above our heads -- can be privatized. If you use it for a prescribed period of time, you own it.
Rothbard argues, for example, that if a noisy airport is built far from any residential area, it "homesteads" the right to radiate loud sound waves across the surrounding vacant land. If a developer builds housing and the new residents complain about the noise, their right to "quiet enjoyment of the houses" is trumped by the airport's right to radiate noise.
According to Rothbard:
The airport, through homesteading, has earned an easement right to creating X decibels of noise. This homesteaded easement is an example of the ancient legal concept of "prescription," in which a certain activity earns a prescriptive property right to the person engaging in the action.
Generalizing the concept, Rothbard continues:
If A uses a certain amount of a resource, how much of that resource is to accrue to his ownership? Our answer is that he owns the technological unit of the resource. The size of that unit depends on the type of good or resource in question, and must be determined by judges, juries, or arbitrators who are expert in the particular resource or industry in question.
Presumably, physicists would be the experts called upon to help judges and juries determine rights to resources associated with the ability of the atmosphere to moderate our temperature.
Rothbard provides the legal basis for citizen lawsuits against carbon polluters. One of the physical consequences of being alive and being warm is that we emit heat in the form of infrared photons. As a physicist would say, we radiate. Our houses radiate, our pets radiate, our houses, farms, and trees radiate. That's what helps us and our stuff stay cool. Collectively, that what keeps our planet from overheating. But we don't have to consider anything collective or planetary. We each have the individual right to radiate, and if you block my photon with one of your carbon dioxide molecules, you owe me just compensation.
About twelve years ago I decided I didn't want four-wheelers driving across my Colorado property on an old mining road. I put some giant boulders in their way. One of their allies filed a lawsuit against me, claiming that the drivers had a prescriptive easement because they had been using the road for more than 20 years (the required period in Colorado). They were invoking the homestead principle, and were outraged in their belief that I was stealing something they owned. They knew they hadn't bought the road, but they had been using it. However, they couldn't provide evidence of 20 years of use, so my right to block their jeeps with my rocks was upheld in court.
The right to radiate by all citizens has a much easier burden of proof. Our prescriptive easements consist of the gaps in the infrared absorption spectrum of the sky that are now being filled up by pollution. We've all been using them for our entire lives. And we can prove it in court if we can convince a judge that we've always had warm bodies, and get a physicist to be an expert witness. All we need are some real libertarians to work up some righteous indignation and file a lawsuit.
The opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and his alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of his employers.
Conservatives and those who don't like the preferred "solutions" to climate change don't cite libertarian values as their primary justification; when mentioned at all, it is way down in the weeds. Their primary reasons are lack of evidence (these are their arguments, true or not), lack of evidence mankind is directly responsible (again, this is their argument), and the lack of feasible alternatives to fossil fuel (no widespread, carbon-neutral sources of electricity are cost competitive with fossil fuels, with nuclear being the only one in the ballpark). They don't cite freedom to emit CO2; thus this is a straw man.
Further, the notion that federal courts would allow for lawsuits against CO2 emitters is full of hope and short on substance. There is no analogous situation, and civil law requires the plaintiff to show the defendant's actions directly led to real harm to the plaintiff; given that CO2 is spread throughout the atmosphere and no single individual or corporation is responsible for anything close to a majority, this has no real chance in court.
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/04/new-greenhouse-gas-threat-the-rise-of-nitrogen-trifluoride-nf3/
Where do I file the lawsuit for against the companies selling all those new solar panels made using NF3?
Seems like the a Catch 22.
House GOP, and some Democrats, seek to kill climate rules
Republicans try to force the military to use dirty energy it doesn’t want | Grist
We can make a difference to improve our lives and our health by voting out the GOP this election, and replacing them with Green Party candidates that do not owe their allegiance to dirty power sponsors in fossil fuel and nuclear power industries that seek to hide from their liability damages. The Green Party does not accept corporate sponsors. www.gp.org.
We cannot continue to wipe out the Earth's ecosystems and their plant and animal biodiversity because, no energy sustains life itself. Only wild and natural ecosystems deliver all of man's life giving functions, services and systems of which "climate moderation and regulation" are part of ecosystem functionings, referred to scientifically as, ecosystems' "life-supporting services.
We have obliterated 43 to 50% of Earth's terrestrial ecosystems. Our terrestrial ecosystems should be preserved because they support the vast majority of all life, and trees and plant biodiversity are vital to Earth's water cycle and cooling ability [through evapotranspiration.] "The loss of trees [and plants] in the planet's water cycle is critical to the advancement of climate change". NASA
If you don't think Dems are also raping ecosystems, your're incorrect. In fact, our prez is not any better ecologically than Bush. A few ecosystem, natural, services: oxygen releasing; the integrity of the atmosphere; the regulation and moderation of the climate, fresh water, the natural sequestration of those climate warming gases; the vital nitrogen cycle; the creation and renewal of a life giving soil; purification of the air and water, and the control and regulation of human disease pathogens to name a few of ecosystem services, including the creation of the biosphere/ecosphere. Why climate change while we destroy the planet?
Indeed the Libertarian approach includes that any right to pollute stops at one's property boundary. LIO whose principals also started the Green movement initiated the modern Libertarian approach that specifically calls for pollutant treatment as common-law harms subject to lawsuit including restraining order, with pollutant reduction to pre-industrial levels as a goal. This has created a trend to legalize such suits, develop bettering standards and action for pollution free zones. In addition Libertarians have highlighted the roile of the regulatory and public agencies themselves in ignoring property protections so creating pollution e.g. nuclear dumping.
Libertarians do not view legislation as particularly helpful and easily politicized regulations as counter-productive; but do support consensus on voluntary approaches to better technology by unions, companies, and consumer groups.
For info on people using voluntary Libertarian tools on similar and other issues, please see the non-partisan Libertarian International Organization @ http://​www.Libertarian-Internation​al.org ....