To the Liberty Loving Environmentalist

Think about it, you’re sitting in your room, checking your pay stub in the email you received from your job’s accountant. You’re feeling alright, maybe towards the end of the month there’ll be a couple ramen noodle dinners, but you can make it to the next paycheck. Just as you are about to close out however, you notice how much the government has taken out of your paycheck in taxes.

Your moderate contentment then shifts to semi-righteous indignation. Man, if the government would just keep its hands off your money, those ramen noodle dinners at the end of the month could be Chipotle or Wendy’s, or maybe even from a normal restaurant!

Your daily bout of frustration at the feds over, you check out Facebook. Scrolling through your news feed, you notice a friend shared a post claiming the habitats of polar bears are shrinking due to global warming. You like the post. “Yeah, global warming is becoming more of a problem. We have to do something,” you say to yourself.

Let’s think about that; as a liberty loving person, what would you do about it? Would you put restrictions on how people can use water or electricity? Well, how about have the government give special loans to solar and wind power companies? That isn’t exactly letting the free market play out, is it?

How about the government mandate that a certain percentage of our power come from renewable sources? Again, that isn’t going to work unless the government picks winners and losers, too. Now you face a dilemma. How do you retain your limited government perspective but also protect the environment?

NEWS FLASH: the answer you have had for every other problem doesn’t change with the environment. If the free market encourages competition and innovation, and the government messes most things up, wouldn’t it be the same with the environment? Let entrepreneurs figure out solutions to renewable energy and the environment, and keep the corruption and ineptitude of the federal bureaucracy out of it.

P.S. there are more polar bears now than there were decades ago…just sayin’.