Protecting the natural environment is vitally important. We owe it to future generations to leave the world a better place than we found it. We all enjoy and want to protect the diversity of wildlife and scenic landscapes our parents and their parents left in our care.
Affordable energy, economic growth, and environmental stewardship need not be at odds with one another. Affordable energy and economic growth create the economic resources necessary for effective environmental stewardship. The energy sources that are most abundant and affordable are surprisingly environmentally friendly, especially given recent technological advances.
The best way to be pro-environment is to be pro energy. Affordable, reliable, and plentiful energy enables us to protect the environment while also creating jobs and the goods and services we need. Expensive and unreliable energy doesn’t protect the environment; it actually harms it by being less efficient and more land-intensive.
Free-Market Environmentalism is an approach to environmental problems that focuses on improving environmental quality using property rights and markets. Markets, property rights, and the rule of law are fundamental to economic growth, and economic growth is fundamental to improving environmental quality. There is a strong correlation between treatment of the environment and standards of living.
Property rights make the environment an asset rather than a liability by giving owners an incentive for stewardship. Markets and the process of exchange give people who have different ideas and values regarding the use of natural resources a way of cooperating rather than fighting. When cooperation supplants conflict, gains from trade emerge.
The Heartland Institute's experts on environment policy issues are available for legislative testimony, speaking engagements, and media interviews.