Environmentalism Leads to Starvation

The environmentalists, conservationists, and population controllers all have irrational policies of attempting to make society a better place. These three ideologies relate closely to one another, and those who believe in one of these three would probably also care about the other two. Many of them opposes technology and opposes change.

The environmentalists, conservationists, and population controllers all presume the existence of the state, heavily regulated against environmental ``exploitation" while advocating the same type of exploitation by itself. They set policies that appears to reduce pollution and poverty, while these only work as minor cookie-cutter fixes while ignoring the origin of these problems: the state.

The state works by exploiting the individuals by taxes, regulations, interventions, and slavery. The state steals from the individuals, while forcing individuals to work inefficiently, unproductively and wastefully. Without the massive waste that the state has caused, poverty will exist much less than it exists today.

In the following sections, we will discuss that we do not need a state to solve all the environmental and overpopulation problems. Though we deny that global warming and overpopulation present a problem to society, we will nevertheless present solutions of reducing of these in a free society. We will do these, just to convince those radical environmentalists to a libertarian-compatible position. (It is hard to enforce morality, unless you present consequentialist arguments defending the deontology.)

The primitivists

The philosophy of primitivism, also advocates these three policies---environmentalism, conservationism, and population control---as the three tenets of their philosophy. The primitivists advocate population reduction, to apparently reduce the supposedly ``high" demand for natural resources and food, and opposes technology as they see it as damaging to the environment. The primitivists lacks the obvious flaw that technology actually helps the environment, since it reduces waste and increases the efficiency of production.

An important policy advocate by most of the proponents of the environmentalists alike, resolves in the tariff policy. Although they have a moral stance of opposing the so-called ``free trade agreements," they also want to raise tariffs afterwards. They say that tariffs reduce pollution and the exploitation of natural resources, and almost all of the governments and organizations believe in just that. All of the organizations practicing environmentalism, including the Green Parties, actively wants to raise tariffs attempting to reduce pollution, but they just do the reverse. They say that raising tariffs would reduce the transportation of products, which would reduce gasoline and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

However, their policy of raising tariffs does the reverse, and much greater harm to the environment than it minusculely fixes. Raising any tariff, would reduce the efficient allocation of production, which might mean that machines might even increase amount of gasoline consumption due to inefficiency.

The overpopulation solution

Raising tariffs also cause another important inefficiency: inefficiency in food production. Whenever states like China and India produces food, the state actively enforces the inefficient production of food. If one wants to see the inefficiency of food production in these states, one would see the primitive tools that they use. The high tariffs prohibit the importation of advanced farming equipment. The missing advanced farming machinery, which might even use less energy the primitive tools, has outweighed by far the presumed gasoline savings from tariffs. This sets another example of how the environmentalists harm, rather than help, the environment.

Farmers in China and India use ridiculously simple tools for farming, probably even hundreds of time as inefficient than the currently available technology would do. If the state does not exist, then tariffs forbidding the importation of machinery will ease, and the agricultural output would increase by multiple times. Food prices will lower, and much more individuals would feed themselves.

In the current world, farmers only use a small fraction of the total arable land. If farmers used all of the currently existing arable land, then food production would multiple. Non-arable land can also turn into arable land by irrigation, so increased production may form from more land for farming, in addition to the unused arable land and importation of advanced machinery.

Furthermore, the increase in technology would let farming productivity rise. Innovations in farming equipment, biotechnology and genetic engineering would increase food productivity at a rate higher than population growth.

These changes, available from current technology, would occur when the state collapses. Food productivity may increase by hundreds of times by these changes, so population a hundred times larger the current population seems not a problem.

According to the laws of economics, food prices will automatically rise when the demand of food increases. Accordingly, individuals will have less children if the population gets unsustainable, due to expensive resource costs from high demand. The population would adjust itself.

Even before the population has multiplied hundreds of times, we will probably colonize space by then.

The demographic paradox

We should even suggest that if the population grows in the first place. In fact, the population declines in the most developed nations. Birth rates falls below replacement level, meaning that the population would eventually shrink. Many economists called this phenomenon as the demographic paradox.

You may wonder the reason behind the population decline in the most developed nations. In developed nations, parents have more incentive to invest their children in education. The rate of return gained from investing additional education compares far greater than the rate of return gained from having more children. Thus, individuals see that having one highly educated child as a more economical investment than having many uneducated children.

In undeveloped nations, by contrast, parents like to have as many children as possible to help them with subsistence farming. As in the last section, the lack of farming equipment causes an inefficient proportion of human labor instead of machinery, parents in the undeveloped nations like to have as much labor as possible by having lots of children.

Unless the farmers in the undeveloped nations import advanced farming equipment, they will have many children instead of using machinery to help them farm. As productivity might increase by hundreds of times as described in the last section, individuals in the undeveloped nations would have less children when the state collapses.

As farming productivity increases in the undeveloped nations, less individuals would work as farmers. But currently, the individuals in the undeveloped nations do not have enough resources to educate their children, due to state taxes and regulations. When the state collapses, however, these individuals would instead invest their children in education instead of farming.

The reverse demographic paradox

In the last section, we have analyzed how education decreases birth rate. Parents find having less, but better educated children as a better investment than lots of children. But other factors might even increase the number of children when the state collapses. Examples includes the increased wealth when the state does not confiscate or regulate, the lack of child labor laws which motivates parents to have children work instead of consume, and the lack of compulsory education laws.

A good example of more children involves increasing wealth. Since the state taxes and regulates individuals, when the state collapses, the wealth of each individual may increase by five times. Richer individuals will have more children, as they can afford to buy resources for their children to consume.

Another side-effect of increased wealth includes less time that individuals work. Due to increased productivity in a free society, individuals do not have to work as long every day, and have more time to spend on their children. It becomes increasingly more common for only one parent in the family to work, in addition to the shorter time and longer weekends that he or she would work every day.

The lack of child labor laws would also increase wealth. The money earned by a child may outweigh the money spent on taking care of the child. Thus, some individuals might have children just to increase wealth.

Population growth benefits the economy

In a free society, the economic quality will depend solely on the current technology levels. The state will not meddle with the economy anymore and would not produce fake growth by manipulating growth statistics. In the absence of the state, the economy will only grow by increased innovation.

A larger population benefits the economy. A larger population implies that more individuals would spend their time to innovate, thus helping the economy to grow further. The increased leisure time from increased productivity will magnify the amount of time individuals would spend on innovation, instead of sustenance.

Ultimately, we should not see population growth as a vice, but a virtue.

The environmental solution

Many libertarians advocate a private rights approach for environmental pollution. The protection of property rights would give individuals an incentive to not dump waste on someone else's property. Individuals may also own portions of water, as it may reduce overfishing---a solution to conservation.

But the property rights approach to environmentalism has a fault. It suggests no solution to global warming, caused by carbon dioxide emissions. Since releasing a moderate amount of carbon dioxide does no apparent harm to neighbors, courts would not likely sue the the polluters. Under current technology, it seems difficult to measure the amount of carbon dioxide released. This also makes individuals difficult to estimate the amount of global warming, and thus impossible to reclaim monetary compensation proportional to the amount of carbon dioxide released.

The global warming solution

Proponents of a state suggest that it would solve global warming caused from carbon dioxide emissions. They suggest that without a state, individuals would still pollute since an individual derives no benefit by reducing emissions. Only in the case that most of the population in the world reduced pollution, everyone would benefit. But the some individuals would free ride, or ``cheat" by letting others reduce emissions while refraining from reducing this themselves. So they conclude that only a state can prevent the free rider problem by forcing every individual to reduce emissions.

However, solutions to this free rider problem does exist even without the state. A method to solve global warming involves the boycott. The individuals who reduced emissions can agree with each other to boycott those who not practice that themselves. To enforce the treaty, the members agreeing with the reduced emissions agreement, would also agree to refrain from trading with the non-members. This would encourage the non-members (the free riders) to agree reducing their emissions, to freely trade with everyone else.

Conclusion

We have shown that the society does not need the state to solve all three problems: global warming, conservation, overpopulation, and poverty. Most importantly, we have appeared to solve the problem that even most libertarians find it as impossible: global warming.

The primitivists has turned onto the wrong direction, hurting individuals from their policies that supposed to help.