The decision announced yesterday by the Secretary of the
Interior, to list the polar bear as “threatened,” removes all doubt
that the Endangered Species Act is broken and in need of urgent
repair. It is the environmental movement that must take
responsibility for breaking it.
A sensible discussion of the polar bear requires acknowledging a
simple fact: that the polar bear is merely a proxy for something
else. The environmental pressure groups like the Center for
Biological Diversity that have petitioned for the listing
acknowledge that their reason for doing so is concern over global
warming. The more warming, they argue, the less sea ice; the less
sea ice, the fewer polar bears. So their hope was that the
Endangered Species Act will give the federal government power to
curtail sources of global warming — such as your car or air
conditioning system.
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne attempted to frustrate this desire by
erecting regulatory barriers, like a statement from the Director of
the US Geological Survey that melting ice in specific areas could
not be tied to specific sources of carbon emissions. These barriers
have all the legislative strength of tissue paper. It will take but
a few moments of a new Administration to blow them away.
After that, the first effects of the now-sacrosanct listing will
probably be felt not in Alaska, where America’s polar bears range,
but in any state thinking of adding a coal-fired power plant to its
energy infrastructure. The Act will be used by the new government
to intervene — and by activists to litigate — against new
construction in any controversial permitting process.
Once that precedent is set, the Act would be used to stop
uncontroversial, even popular permit applications. Electricity
supplies would be constrained. Blackouts and brownouts would
proliferate. Were you to buy a plug-in electric car a few years
from now, you may well find you have no electricity to power
it.
AMERICA’S ENERGY infrastructure will be crippled, and for what?
China is building two coal-fired power plants a week and plans to
build 97 airports in the next 12 years.
Even if the United States reduces its carbon emissions to zero,
global emissions are still likely to increase. If greenhouse gases
are truly causing problems for the polar bear, U.S. legislative
action will do nothing to protect it.
The polar bear is a pawn in a bigger game, one that pits
individuals who want to maximize human welfare against those who
regard humanity as blight on the planet. At stake is technological
progress itself. And this game will do nothing to protect
endangered species.
Here’s why: Only since Western society has become wealthy enough
have we been able to attach value endangered species and moved to
protect them. Prosperity is good not only for us, but for the
endangered species as well.
Wolves were reintroduced in the Northwest only after it became
apparent that concerned people would donate money to compensate
ranchers for the wildlife taken by the animals. The wood duck was
saved from extinction by hunters who wanted to keep hunting it.
Elephants and rhinos in Africa have thrived when private owners
take responsibility for them.
Yet, as I explain in my book, The Really Inconvenient
Truths, the fundamental problem with the Endangered Species
Act is that it strips value from the species for precisely the same
reason that listing the polar bear would damage the nation.
If a landowner discovers an endangered species on his land, the
last thing he wants to do is tell the feds, since the subsequent
restrictions on the use of his land could ruin him. Thus,
landowners routinely resort to killing endangered species,
disposing of the evidence, and keeping their lips sealed — a
practice known as “shoot, shovel and shut up.”
STEVEN LEVITT, co-author of Freakonomics, has recognized
the Endangered Species Act’s perverse incentives, which he analyzes
as a case study in the law of unintended consequences. (The
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the Act’s
international equivalent, has the same perverse incentives.) And
now it threatens to create another unintended consequence: to enact
nationwide carbon emissions restrictions through the back door.
The Endangered Species Act is in dire need of reform. It is a
completely inappropriate vehicle for climate legislation, and it is
failing in its primary intention. A good first step would be to
grant people who find endangered species on their land ownership
rights over them; people would then have an incentive to protect
species they own.
Until we get such reforms, however, the Bush administration
should reject this attempt to restrict Americans’ energy use. The
effects of listing the polar bear will be so wide-reaching that the
polar bear might rapidly lose its place in the hearts of the
American people.
