AN ENVIRONMENTALISM THAT WOULD WORK | 2001-06-02
Every so often a news reports comes in that, after years of litigation, a huge corporation has been convicted of doing major damage to the environment. They are then fined a few million bucks.
This is a joke. Those few millions wouldn't pay for the paper clips used by that corporation over those same years. The fine means nothing. If people are committing a purposeful crime, which you must prove in cases like this, you should JAIL those responsible, no matter how rich they are.
But liberals and self-styled environmentalists, who claim to be tough on corporate greed, never propose such a thing. No corporation will be deterred by a threat of such a fine, and we all know it. Corporate fines don't work, and liberals support them.
If rich people purposely commit crimes, you must jail them for it, or stop playing games.
An environmental policy that would work is like any policy that would work. Regulations that work produce few rules, but every single rule is ruthlessly enforced.
If you rigorously enforce the rules, that assures that the rules will be few. People are careful about passing restrictions if they know they have to obey them.
My approach to the environment or to education or to crime would work, because it is intended to work. I want a clean world, I want crime down, I want better education. So, my policies would be designed to produce these things.
Liberals are not primarily interested in a clean world or less crime or better education. Liberal proposals are made to push liberal causes.
The left is not interested in reducing crime. Its real aim is to take guns out of private hands.
Good education does not really concern them. What they want is to RE-EDUCATE children into leftist ideas.
And in the case of the environment, it is not accidental that all the people who used to push outright socialism are now calling themselves "environmentalists." What they want is not clean air but government control.
As you can see, real liberal goals have nothing to do with a policy that WORKS. In fact, a policy that actually SOLVED problems would get in the way.