Liberty News -- Saving the environment starts with stopping the government

This criminal has leaked radioactive waste into drinking water, dumpedsewage into national parks, and poured PCBs into rivers.

This same lawbreaker contaminated at least 61,155 sites around theUSA, and produces more toxic waste annually than the nation's fivelargest chemical companies combined.

No. It's the federal government. According to a major investigativereport by the Boston Globe in 1999, the federal government has become"the worst polluter in the land."

Experts say the cost of cleaning up the damage done by federalagencies and the military could exceed $300 billion. That's five timesthe cost of the environmental harm done by all private businessescombined.

Even more chilling, many federal agencies are exempt fromenvironmental laws such as the Clean Water Act; individual bureaucratsare immune from criminal prosecution; and Congress even passed a lawthat protects the military from having to pay environmental fines.

As a result, the Boston Globe noted, the federal government "has alicense to pollute."

The record of environmental devastation caused by the federalgovernment -- and uncovered by the Boston Globe -- is staggering.

* In Yellowstone National Park, "tens of thousands of gallons of rawsewage" have been dumped into pristine lakes and streams. Althoughthis would be a crime if committed by a private company, the ParkService is exempt from the Clean Water Act.

* The Environmental Protection Agency's laboratories in Lexington,Massachusetts were discovered leaking mercury into ground water.

* In Washington's Puget Sound, the U.S. Navy's aircraft carrier USSKitty Hawk dumped 6,000 gallons of jet fuel into the water. A privateship would have been fined $90,000 for that crime; the Navy paidnothing, and refused to allow state environmental inspectors to boardits ships.

* The Department of Energy has polluted 475 billion gallons of groundwater, thanks to years of missile and bomb production.

* The Department of Defense generates 750,000 tons of hazardous wasteannually -- more than the country's five largest chemical companiescombined.

* As recently as 1996, 27% of all government facilities were not incompliance with clean water laws. In fact, federal facilities are"more likely to violate water standards" than private companies,reported the Globe.

* In the Shenandoah River in Virginia, a military contractor dumpedcarcinogenic PCBs into the river for 50 years with the approval of(and subsidies from) the federal government.

Who will foot the bill to clean up the damage to the air, water, andsoil caused by politicians and federal bureaucrats? The U.S. taxpayer,of course.

According to the Boston Globe, the tab to clean up the federalgovernment's 61,155 toxic waste sites is estimated at $300 billion.(By comparison, it will cost only $57 billion to clean up all thepollution caused by chemical and oil companies.)

And don't expect this to happen in your lifetime. It will take atleast 75 years to clean up the 113 radioactive sites created by theDepartment of Energy alone -- which means your grandchildren willstill be paying the cost of yesterday's polluting politicians.

If you've never heard about the ecological havoc perpetrated by thefederal government, you're not alone. Environmental activists like tocriticize private companies, while pretending that only government can"save" us from polluters.

We know better. We want our families to be able to drink clean waterand breathe clean air. And we know that trusting the environmentalscofflaws in the federal government to make that happen is liketrusting a fox to guard the hen house.

So the first step for any sensible environmental protection programmust be to stop the nation's #1 polluter -- the federal government.That's why we would:

* Make government officials personally liable for the damage they doto the environmental and to American citizens.

Currently, government officials are protected by sovereign immunity,"the legal doctrine that the government and its agents cannot belegally prosecuted for harm done in the line of duty," wrote Jarret B.Wollstein for the International Society for Individual Liberty.

As a result, the government can not only pollute almost at will, itcan also hurt or kill people, and the bureaucrats and politicians whoauthorized those actions will never face criminal charges.

Here's just one example: Starting in 1951, the federal governmentdetonated 1,051 nuclear blasts in Nevada. Those tests blanketed thestate -- and, indeed, all of the lower 48 states -- with deadlyradioactive material.

The government did this despite the fact that "declassifiedtranscripts released from 1978 to 1980 show that scientists knew asearly as 1947 that fission products released by atomic bomb testscould be deadly to humans," wrote Janet Burton Seegmiller in TheHistory of Iron County. "The AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] chose toignore warnings from its own scientists and outside medical researchers."

As a result, the National Cancer Institute estimated in 1997 that asmany as 230,000 Americans were exposed to high levels of radioactiveIodine 131, and up to 75,000 of them might develop fatal thyroid cancer.

In 1984, in the landmark case Irene Allen et al v. United States, aUtah judge held the U.S. government responsible for causing leukemia,cancer, and other radiation-caused illnesses in more than 1,000 people.

The victory was short-lived: The ruling was overturned by the TenthCircuit Court of Appeals in Denver on the grounds that the governmenthad sovereign immunity for its actions -- even though it knew thenuclear testing was deadly. In 1988, the Supreme Court refused to hearan appeal.

As Mary Ruwart wrote in Healing Our World: "Sovereign immunityviolates the principle of non-aggression. It allows governmentofficials to do what individuals cannot."

If you dumped PCBs into a river -- or showered the nation withradioactivity -- you would face criminal charges, jail time, andpossibly the death penalty. Government officials should pay the sameprice if they endanger our health with radiation, chemicals, and othertoxins.

But there's more to protecting the environment than just halting thedamage caused by government. Private companies pollute, too. That'swhy Libertarians would:

* Make polluters pay for their crimes. When corporations actirresponsibly -- by dumping poisons on others' property or by riskingother peoples' health with air or water pollution -- corporateofficers should face strict civil liability.

In some states, corporate leaders are already being held responsible.For example, in Indiana, Lawrence Roseman, the president of RLG, Inc.,was held personally liable for over $3 million in civil penalties forleaks in a landfill his company operated. And in Connecticut, twoofficers of the BEC Corporation were found personally liable for oilcontamination.

In other countries, common-law statutes protect not just property, butrivers and streams, too.

For example, in the United Kingdom, the English Anglers CooperativeAssociation defends fishing rights by suing upstream polluters whodamage fish stocks. Salmon in Scotland and New Brunswick, Canada areprotected in the same way.

Holding polluters directly responsible is a more efficient solutionthan "one size fits all" government regulations.

Already, individuals and community groups have made enormous progressin protecting endangered species. For example, the American BisonAssociation helped increase the number of buffalo from only 25 acentury ago to over 100,000 today -- with 90% of them living onprivate land.

In Pennsylvania, Hawk Mountain -- a privately owned 2,000-acrewildlife refuge -- is one of the nation's largest protectedsanctuaries for hawks and other migrating birds. And the ExoticWildlife Association protects more scimitar-horned oryx on privatelands in the United States than exist in its native African range.

By reducing taxes and regulations, America can encourage moreentrepreneurial environmentalism.

In most measurable ways, the environment is better off in the UnitedStates than it was just 20 or 30 years ago.

"The air in the United States and in other rich countries isirrefutably safer to breathe now than in decades past; the quantitiesof pollutants -- especially particulates, which are the main threat tohealth -- have been declining," noted Julian L. Simon for the CatoInstitute in 1996. "More generally, the environment is increasinglyhealthy, with every prospect that this trend will continue."

Despite this (or perhaps because of this), Americans think thatprotecting the environment is an important goal, but by no means themost important goal for the nation.

A national survey in 2001 by the Gallup Organization found that only7% of adults ranked "protecting the environment" as their highestpriority. A survey of people in Western states by the Los AngelesTimes that same year found that only 13% listed the environment as "asthe most important problem facing our country today."

For Americans who consider the environment to be a pivotal issue --and for the millions more who want to see environmental progresscontinue -- Libertarians have a compelling, if unexpected, message:Protecting the environment does not start by turning to the federalgovernment for help. It starts by protecting Americans from "the worstpolluter in the land" -- the federal government.

Quote:
- No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the peoplewho wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no"and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times inthe first seven articles of the Constituti