Edited by Terry Anderson and Donald Leal

Free Market Environmentalism provides a vision for environmentalism's future, based on the success of environmental entrepreneurs around the world. The work provides the next generation of environmental market ideas and the chapters are co-authored with young scholars and policy analysts who represent the next generation of environmental leaders. The book first appeared in 1991, this is the third and thoroughly updated edition.
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Table of Contents of Free Market Environmentalism
- Visions of Environmentalism (Katy Hansen)
- Rethinking the Way We Think (Shawn Regan)
- Who Owns the Environment? (Shawn Regan)
- This Land Is Whose Land? (Holly Lippke Fretwell)
- Prospecting for Energy and the Environment (Brandon Scarborough)
- Tapping Water Markets (Brandon Scarborough, Lawrence Reed Watson)
- Fencing the Fishery (Terry L. Anderson, Donald R. Leal)
- Calling on Communities (Laura Huggins)
- Enviropreneurship in Action (Lawrence Reed Watson)
- Frontiers of Free Market Environmentalism (Terry L. Anderson, Donald R. Leal)
"Environmental problems are analyzed as market failures mostly owing to nonexistent or clouded property rights. The analysis usually begins by understanding the Coase Theorem and the Tragedy of the Commons. In this pursuit, the work of Nobel Laureates such as Ronald Coase, James Buchanan, and Elinor Ostrom is referenced, among many other economists and observers. The solutions the Anderson team presents are win-win results where the resource rivalry is channeled into cost-and-externality-minimizing activities or internalized so that those who make the decisions receive the benefits and bear the costs. Economic results are presented in contrast to political solutions, where the result tends to be winner-takes-all. Concern for property rights, prices, and markets threads its way through the book. Here is where the book takes a turn. It views both political and some economic environmentalists as static viewers of the world. In this sense, others see the environment as tending toward an almost neoclassical equilibrium where, if it were not for human interference, it would return to nirvana. The authors see the world as always being dynamic and always being shocked by exogenous forces. They want to develop ecological entrepreneurship as a driving force to lower costs of defending, enforcing, and trading property rights so that resources can be used more efficiently. Fundamentally, they see both markets and ecosystems as bottoms-up systems that cannot be managed from the top. [...] Much of the book is devoted to stories, cases, and experiences of improving the environment in this way. And of course, they compare this approach to its arch enemies—doing nothing or using politics as usual. [...] Business economists will find Free Market Environmentalism to be both an exciting and illuminating adventure.
- 0:28 - How should we think about environmental policy and what role should markets play in protecting the environment?
- 1:33 - Are the free market and the environment at odds with one another?
- 2:32 - What is the tragedy of the commons and how do you prevent it in environmental policy?
- 3:31 - What role does the government play in a free market system, especially in environmental policy?
- 4:31 - What are a few examples where free market environmentalism has led to a better solution than government regulation?
- 5:58 - Doesn't free market environmentalism mean selling the environment to private companies?
Or watch this panel discussion (40 minutes) with Terry Anderson on free market environmentalism.
About Terry Anderson
Terry L. Anderson has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University) since 1998 and is currently the John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow. He is the past president of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, MT, and a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University where he won many teaching awards during his 25 year career.