FarFromPumpin - FME

I posted this answer in a Samizdata comment section to a post on global warming.

What can a free market environmentalist do?

1) Work on your own environmental footprint where it's in your self interest. Replace your incandescents with fluorescents, consider an efficient vehicle the next time you buy one (VW TDI, Smart, Toyota, Honda, even Ford has a hybrid Explorer), and so on.

2) Insist that your government follow the greenies advice where the cost/benefit makes sense. For most people, things like solar and wind power are hard arguments to make because the payoff takes so long (10, 20, perhaps 30 years), but the government will probably still be occupying its buildings and conducting business as usual 30 years hence. Also, Amory Lovins' research for the DoD's use of fuel seems to me to be correct: it takes 9 gallons or so of fuel for every 1 gallon delivered to a weapons platforom. Therefore, the DoD should invest heavily in lightweighting and alternate power systems for its vehicles, vessels, and aircraft.

3) This is more controversial, but here goes: insofar as you think Coase was correct, someone has to enforce tradable emissions permit rules. Therefore, you should support well-designed cap & trade programs.

Those steps, though not consistent with a night watchman state, are consistent with a libertarian ideology.

The rest of the comments are here. Some of them are quite interesting. Many seem to be against any kind of non-private action, but there are plenty of expensive public good suggestions made. Nobody explains how to square the apparent contradiction (though, as Coase also showed, sometimes lighthouses are produced privately). Also, there is this.

My assumption is that even if global warming turns out to be due to albedo or other explanations, the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere is undeniable and there is a possibility that we could induce forced warming. By "we", I also mean China and India as their economies catch up (and someday, we hope Africa joins the party).

However, we develop cleaner and greener technology every year. After all, nobody wants to haul or heat waste products like sulphur, so it's in our own best interest to reduce pollution. The automobile is ripe for vigorous innovation, since only about 1% of the energy consumed goes into moving the payload (you, the driver) from A to B (you are about 5% of the mass, and only about 20% of the energy goes into moving the vehicle from A to B, while the rest goes into repeated acceleration from stop, fighting the wind and road friction, and making noise and heat). As a result, newer entrants to the industrial club get to leapfrog past old technologies straight into new ones. Most Chinese cell phone users never owned a landline, so the poles, repeaters, cables, and handsets won't have to be built and therefore Chinese telecommunications have smaller environmental footprints than if they had to build two systems (like the West did).

So, for the most part, the problem will become solved because it is in our interest to have it solved even if it weren't for the global warming potential.