¹ See, for example, Spencer, Roy W., Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians, and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor (New York: Encounter Books, 2008)Google Scholar; Christy, John R., “The Global Warming Fiasco,” in Bailey, Ronald, ed., Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death (New York: Prima, 2002)Google Scholar; Michaels, Patrick J. and Balling, Robert C. Jr., The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2000)Google Scholar; Lindzen, Richard S., “Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus,” Regulation 15, no. 2 (1992)Google Scholar; and Michaels, Patrick J., Sound and Fury: The Science and Politics of Global Warming (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1991)Google Scholar.

Some skeptics argue that global warming is largely natural, and any human contribution to such warming is outweighed by natural variability. See, for example, Singer, S. Fred and Avery, Dennis T., Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, updated and expanded edition (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar. Even among skeptics this appears to be a minority view.

² On the problems caused by the reliance upon scientific argument to resolve normative policy disputes, see Pielke, Roger A. Jr., The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ For my own contribution to this literature, see The Costs of Kyoto: Climate Change Policy and Its Implications, ed. Jonathan H. Adler (Washington, DC: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1997). The present essay represents a substantial evolution of my views on climate change policy.

⁴ “No regrets” policies are policy measures that may reduce the risks posed by climate change but that could be justified independent of the risks posed by climate change. For examples of such policies, see Adler, Jonathan H., ed., Greenhouse Policy Without Regrets: A Free Market Approach to the Uncertain Risks of Climate Change (Washington, DC: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2000)Google Scholar.

⁵ See, for example, Goklany, Indur M., “What to Do about Climate Change,” Policy Analysis, no. 609 (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, February 5, 2008)Google Scholar; and Lomborg, Bjørn, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)Google Scholar.

⁶ See, for instance, Anderson, Terry L. and Leal, Donald R., Free Market Environmentalism, revised edition (New York: Palgrave, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adler, Jonathan H., ed., Ecology, Liberty, and Property: A Free Market Environmental Reader (Washington, DC: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2000)Google Scholar; and Smith, Fred L. Jr., “A Free-Market Environmental Program,” Cato Journal 11, no. 3 (1992): 457–75Google Scholar.

⁷ Anderson and Leal, Free Market Environmentalism, 4.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ It is worth noting that Nobel laureate economist Ronald H. Coase, whose work on social costs has been very influential in environmental law and economics, takes a slightly different view, arguing that the mere existence of externalities, in and of itself, does not demonstrate any failure at all, as many externalities are too insignificant to address profitably. As Coase explained,

Coase, R. H., “The Firm, the Market, and the Law,” in Coase, , The Firm, the Market, and the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 24, 26Google Scholar. See also Buchanan, James M. and Stubblebine, William Craig, “Externality,” Economica 29 (1962): 371–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar (noting that externalities are only relevant in a limited set of circumstances).

¹⁰ As economist Paul Heyne counsels, “Ardent environmentalists need to discover and acknowledge that the same limitations which made economic central planning impossible will make it impossible to establish a comprehensive system of central environmental planning.” Heyne, , “Economics, Ethics, and Ecology,” in Taking the Environment Seriously, ed. Meiners, Roger and Yandle, Bruce (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), 47Google Scholar.

¹¹ Stewart, Richard B., “United States Environmental Regulation: A Failing Paradigm,” Journal of Law and Commerce 15 (1996): 587Google Scholar.

¹² Smith, Fred L. Jr., “Conclusion: Environmental Policy at the Crossroads,” in Environmental Politics: Public Costs, Private Rewards, ed. Greve, Michael S. and Smith, Fred L. Jr. (New York: Praeger, 1992), 192Google Scholar.

¹³ Hardin, Garrett, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (December 13, 1968): 1243Google ScholarPubMed. Two qualifications should be noted with regard to Hardin's essay. First, while Hardin was responsible for popularizing the notion of the commons problem, he was hardly the first to make these observations. The commons problem with regard to ocean fisheries was identified several years earlier in Gordon, H. Scott, “The Economic Theory of a Common-Property Resource: The Fishery,” Journal of Political Economy 62 (1954): 124CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Scott, Anthony, “The Fishery: The Objectives of Sole Ownership,” Journal of Political Economy 63 (1955): 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The general phenomenon was also identified some time earlier by , Aristotle in Politics 1261b32, ed. Saunders, Trevor J., trans. Sinclair, T. A. (New York: Penguin Books, 1981)Google Scholar. Second, Hardin's analysis applies to open-access commons and should not be taken as a historical account of the actual conditions of commonly owned pastures, which were often protected by common property rules or social norms.

¹⁴ Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” 1244.

¹⁵ Ibid., 1245, 1247.

¹⁶ While all, or perhaps nearly all, environmental problems can be analyzed as variants of the commons problem, it is often useful to draw finer analytical distinctions among different types of environmental concerns, ranging from pollution spillovers to the provision of public goods, among others.

¹⁷ De Alessi, Louis, “Gains from Private Property: The Empirical Evidence,” in Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law, ed. Anderson, Terry L. and McChesney, Fred S. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 108Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Smith, R. J., “Resolving the Tragedy of the Commons by Creating Private Property Rights in Wildlife,” Cato Journal 1 (Fall 1981), 456–57Google Scholar.

¹⁹ This research is summarized in Adler, Jonathan H., “Legal Obstacles to Private Ordering in Marine Fisheries,” Roger Williams University Law Review 8 (Fall 2002): 19–22Google Scholar.

²⁰ Jonathan H. Adler, “Poplar Front: The Rebirth of America's Forests,” in Adler, ed., Ecology, Liberty, and Property; see also Sedjo, Roger A., “Forests: Conflicting Signals,” in Bailey, Ronald, ed., The True State of the Planet (New York: The Free Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

²¹ Stroup, Richard L., Eco-nomics: What Everyone Should Know about Economics and the Environment (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2003), 74–75Google Scholar (summarizing research showing the relationship between the protection of property rights and environmental performance).

²² Norton, Seth W., “Property Rights, the Environment, and Economic Well-Being,” in Hill, Peter J. and Meiners, Roger E., eds., Who Owns the Environment? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 51Google Scholar.

²³ For instance, the excessive use of the eminent domain power could come at the expense of environmental conservation. See Somin, Ilya and Adler, Jonathan H., “The Green Costs of Kelo: Economic Development Takings and Environmental Protection,” Washington University Law Review 84, no. 3 (2006): 623–66Google Scholar.

²⁴ On the early activities of the National Audubon Society, and its precursor, the National Committee of Audubon Societies, see Graham, Frank Jr., The Audubon Ark: A History of the National Audubon Society (New York: Knopf, 1990)Google Scholar. On early twentieth-century views of wetlands, and governmental efforts to make more “productive use” of such lands, see Adler, Jonathan H., “Wetlands, Waterfowl, and the Menace of Mr. Wilson: Commerce Clause Jurisprudence and the Limits of Federal Wetland Regulation,” Environmental Law 29 (1999): 19–20Google Scholar.

²⁵ Sugg, Ike C., “Where the Buffalo Roam, and Why,” Exotic Wildlife, January/February 1999Google Scholar. Sugg quotes wildlife conservationist Valerius Geist saying, “Bison were initially saved by six individuals who either saw business opportunities in the existence of bison or simply wanted to save a vanishing species.”

²⁶ U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, “Special Report: The Public Benefits of Private Conservation,” in Environmental Quality, 1984 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), 387–94Google Scholar.

²⁷ Anderson and Leal, Free Market Environmentalism, 132.

²⁸ For FME accounts of the common law's capacity to protect private property rights, see Brubaker, Elizabeth, Property Rights in the Defence of Nature (Toronto, Ontario: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 1995)Google Scholar; Yandle, Bruce, Common Sense and Common Law for the Environment: Creating Wealth in Hummingbird Economies (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997)Google Scholar; Meiners, Roger and Yandle, Bruce, “Common Law Environmentalism,” Public Choice 94 (1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bate, Roger, “Protecting English and Welsh Rivers: The Role of the Anglers' Conservation Association,” in Meiners, Roger E. and Morriss, Andrew P., eds., The Common Law and the Environment: Rethinking the Statutory Basis for Modern Environmental Law (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000)Google Scholar; and Morris, Julian, “Climbing Out of the Hole: Sunsets, Subjective Value, the Environment, and English Common Law,” Fordham Environmental Law Journal 14 (Spring 2003): 343–73Google Scholar.

²⁹ Elizabeth Brubaker, “The Common Law and the Environment: The Canadian Experience,” in Hill and Meiners, eds., Who Owns the Environment?, 88–89.

³⁰ Whalen v. Union Bag & Paper Co., 208 N.Y. 1 (1913).

³¹ Bruce Yandle, “Coase, Pigou, and Environmental Rights,” in Hill and Meiners, eds., Who Owns the Environment?, 138.

Typically, civil actions only require that the plaintiff show the existence of a tort by a preponderance of the evidence. Some theorists, however, such as the late libertarian economist Murray N. Rothbard, would go much further, requiring property owners to demonstrate the existence of harm from pollution “beyond a reasonable doubt,” even if that renders most forms of pollution nonactionable. See Rothbard, , “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” Cato Journal 3, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 87–88Google Scholar. Even though the imposition of a higher burden of proof would mean that fewer individuals harmed by pollution would be able to achieve recompense in court, Rothbard argued that such a high standard of proof is necessary because “it is far better to let an aggressive act slip through than to impose coercion and commit aggression ourselves.” Ibid., 70.

³² Such bargaining over the allocation of property rights is often referred to as “Coasean bargaining,” after the economist Ronald H. Coase, who argued that, in the absence of transaction costs, property rights will be transferred to their highest and best use through voluntary transactions among property owners. See Coase, R. H., “The Problem of Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics 3, no. 1 (1960): 1–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ For examples of such negotiation in the context of stream pollution, see Bate, “Protecting English and Welsh Rivers.”

³⁴ Brubaker, Property Rights in the Defence of Nature, 127–70; Morris, “Climbing Out of the Hole,” 359–61.

³⁵ For example, Competitive Enterprise Institute president Fred Smith argues that progressive thought undermined classical liberal principles that had been embodied in the common law and had the potential to provide greater environmental protection:

Smith, Fred L. Jr., “The Progressive Era's Derailment of Classical-Liberal Evolution,” The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (June 2004): 28, 30Google Scholar.

³⁶ For example, in an essay on property rights and air pollution, Murray N. Rothbard explained:

Rothbard, “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” 60. Similarly, economist Paul Heyne argues that the protection of private property rights is as much about justice as efficiency. See Heyne, “Economics, Ethics, and Ecology,” 34.

³⁷ For a brief and accessible summary of the science of global climate change, see Collins, William et al. , “The Physical Science behind Climate Change,” Scientific American (August 2007)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

³⁸ Overall, global mean surface temperatures have risen over the past century, but not consistently. Surface temperatures warmed from 1911 to 1944, cooled from 1944 to 1976, and have warmed again since. The mid-century cooling is generally attributed to the emission of sulfates and other industrial pollutants.

³⁹ See Solomon, S. et al. , eds., Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. The IPCC is an international body created by the United Nations Environmental Programme and World Meteorological Organization “to provide an authoritative international statement of scientific understanding of climate change.”

⁴⁰ For example, climatologists Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, Jr., two prominent warming skeptics, have predicted that there will be 0.65–0.75 degrees Celsius warming by 2050. Michaels and Balling, The Satanic Gases, 210–11. They have also predicted a warming-induced sea-level rise of five to eleven inches over the next century. Ibid., 162.

⁴¹ Solomon et al., Climate Change 2007. There is some controversy and uncertainty surrounding the IPCC's estimates of projected sea-level rise due to the failure to include the potential effects of rapid ice sheet collapse. See Oppenheimer, Michael et al. , “The Limits of Consensus,” Science 317 (2007): 1505CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Solomon, Susan et al. , “A Closer Look at the IPCC Report,” Science 319 (2008): 409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Lomborg, Cool It, 15.

⁴³ Ibid., 39.

⁴⁴ Mendelsohn, Robert, The Greening of Global Warming (Washington, DC: The AEI Press, 1999), 12–13Google Scholar; see also Mendelsohn, Robert, Dinar, Ariel, and Williams, Larry, “The Distributional Impact of Climate Change on Rich and Poor Countries,” Environment and Development Economics 11 (2006): 159CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁵ For an exchange on this question among self-professed FME advocates, see “Global Warming: A Dialogue—Should Victims Receive Compensation?” PERC Reports (March 2005).

⁴⁶ Anderson and Leal, Free Market Environmentalism, 160.

⁴⁷ Taylor, Jerry, “Clouds Over Kyoto: The Debate Over Global Warming,” Regulation, 21, no. 1 (1998)Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Mendelsohn, The Greening of Global Warming, 1, 2.

⁴⁹ Goklany, Indur M., “What to Do about Climate Change,” Policy Analysis, no. 609 (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, February 5, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Goklany, Indur M., The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2001)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Lomborg, Cool It, 42.

⁵² Mendelsohn, Dinar, and Williams, “The Distributional Impact of Climate Change on Rich and Poor Countries,” 161.

⁵³ Michaels and Balling, The Satanic Gases, 162.

⁵⁴ Ibid.

⁵⁵ Anderson and Leal, Free Market Environmentalism, 160.

⁵⁶ Farber, Daniel A., “Basic Compensation for Victims of Climate Change,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 155 (2007): 1644–45Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ For the purposes of this thought experiment, intranational effects of climate change are being ignored. In actuality, however, such intranational effects could be significant. In the United States, for example, sea-level rise might impose substantial costs on coastal states, whereas states with substantial agricultural production may benefit significantly from a modest warming and a consequent expansion of growing seasons.

⁵⁸ Morris reports on cases in which “multiple sources have been held jointly liable for harms,” even in cases where “individually their actions would not have constituted a nuisance.” See Morris, “Climbing Out of the Hole,” 358. Farber also discusses precedents for apportioning liability among multiple defendants who may all have contributed to a given harm. See Farber, “Basic Compensation,” 1639–40.

⁵⁹ This assumption may be particularly unrealistic insofar as some apparent sea-level rise may actually be due to subsidence of coastal areas, and because some subsidence may be due to various human activities in affected nations. Nonetheless, there is little disagreement that anthropogenic climate change should produce some increase in mean global sea level.

⁶⁰ As Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein point out, “emission reductions are an in-kind benefit,” and poor people in less-developed nations would almost certainly prefer a “cash transfer” or other compensation in lieu of emission reductions. Posner, Eric A. and Sunstein, Cass R., “Global Warming and Social Justice,” Regulation 31, no. 1 (2008): 17Google Scholar.

⁶¹ There are precedents for such Coasean bargains under international law. As part of the Montreal Protocol, the international agreement to phase out the use and production of substances that deplete the stratospheric ozone layer that took effect in 1989, those nations most at risk from ozone depletion agreed to compensate other nations for giving up their right to produce and use such substances in the future. This exchange shows that such bargains are possible, even on an international scale, but that does not mean that this bargain was consistent with FME principles.

⁶² This is a reasonable assumption, since the contemporary customary international law of transboundary pollution disputes is largely based upon the law of interstate pollution disputes in the United States, which, in turn, is based upon traditional common law principles.

⁶³ As Farber notes, effects such as sea-level rise “are readily identifiable, do not raise the complicated causation issues that plague other potential forms of damages, and can be measured (at least roughly) in a fairly straightforward way.” Farber, “Basic Compensation,” 1606–7.