… IT IS UNFETTERED
GOVERNMENTS THAT
ARE NO FRIEND TO THE
ENVIRONMENT
“Are Western governments doing enough for their citizens by intervening in the markets during the current economic crisis?” This was the question posed by Ed Broadbent in a speech earlier this year at York University. The former federal NDP leader argued that after decades of deregulation, a return to more active involvement of the state in the economy was necessary to boost economic growth and restore “social rights”.1 However until very recently it was environmental issues and especially global warming that were top of most Canadian’s minds.2
The environment, and the deregulation and market failure that supposedly caused the current generation of economic problems have more in common than is generally recognized. In both cases, government is called upon to curb the excesses of “unfettered capitalism”: Business is thus identified as the source of the problem and government intervention is urged to protect its citizens and the environment. The case for government-sponsored environmental protection rests on the assumption that businesses strive to avoid the costs that minimizing environmental damage impose upon them, and only government regulation will prevent them externalizing these costs to society as a whole.
“This rush to judgement is unwarranted and the case for “green innovation” is a useful case study as to why: green innovation has been crowded out, not by a couple of decades of deregulation, but by over a century of government interference with market mechanisms. As we’ll show, during the Cold War era a superficial comparison of planned economies with mixed economies indicates market economies performed better in terms of environmental stewardship. However, in both cases limitations on individual rights were a necessary precondition for uploading responsibility for the environment to government and government intervention failed to deliver the environmental benefits sought.”
These observations are relevant at a time when many are using fear of climate change to justify further reductions of individual rights and to allow state and international bodies increased latitude to modify the behaviour of consumers and businesses and slow economic growth.
The Invisible Hand’s “Green Thumb”
The market mechanism, so frequently maligned by those who owe it an enviable standard of living, involves two distinct components: the economic system must generate and accurately transmit information regarding the relative scarcity of potential resources to economic actors and these signals must trigger innovations which alter the “way things are done” in order to maintain or enhance a particular firm’s viability. Price is thus the feedback mechanism which determines the direction in which an economy evolves in response to changing circumstances.
Businesses constantly seek out ways to generate more income, to reduce production costs, or to do both simultaneously. To improve their competitive position entrepreneurs require both the incentive to experiment with new ventures in an inherently uncertain commercial environment, and a degree of comfort that the institutional framework within which risky decisions are taken is unlikely to change.
There is an important qualitative distinction between the growth that occurs as a result of development and the growth that results when price signals are distorted. Growth occurs as the result of a development process characterized by waste minimizing innovation when businesses respond to price feedback in a freely functioning market economy. Unimpeded interaction between the market place and competing private firms acts like a compass, directing business towards “development”. Economic growth can also occur in the absence of accurate price signals — and the efficiency improvements competition stimulates in response to those price signals — by merely increasing the volume of resources mobilized for economic purposes.
Adam Smith articulated the idea that businesses acting in a manner which improves their well-being are drawn, as if by an “invisible hand”, to simultaneously and unintentionally generate benefits for society at large. Usually the benefits for the firm are defined in terms of its financial bottom line, while the benefits for society include minimal environmental impact. Hence the notion that the “invisible hand” includes a “green thumb”.
The ‘self-interest’ highlighted by economists since Adam Smith is routinely interpreted as “greed” by those who disconnect freedom to act from the responsibility the constraint of not impinging on the rights of others imposes.3 When the state reduces the redress available to all its citizens when their rights are transgressed, it creates opportunities for special interests to profit at the expense of the majority. It is under these circumstances that self-interest runs amok, and market mechanisms get the blame.
An institutional framework defines both the market’s rules of engagement and the ease with which price information can be determined and widely disseminated. The term laissez-faire is normally used to describe business operating with minimal government interference. We begin by investigating the scope for the invisible hand to flex its “green thumb” under laissez-faire conditions.
Laissez-faire Environmental Stewardship
The Industrial Revolution was a phenomenon closely associated with laissez-faire capitalism. The industrialization process in Victorian Britain, like that which is occurring in many parts of the world today, generated dramatic improvements in living standards. However, from a post-industrial perspective, the initial stages of industrialization appear to be an era of social deprivation and poor living tandards. Although preindustrial living conditions are less likely to be recorded or are conveniently forgotten, they were nonetheless considerably worse.
Victorian Britain is even less likely to be viewed as a showcase for environmental stewardship. Indeed, the period is retrospectively associated with chimneys belching noxious smoke and waterways polluted with oluble waste. In Victorian times, however, little was known about the deleterious effects of many wastes. What is important is the manner in which wastes that were recognized as hazardous at the time were treated.
The Industrial Revolution was the product of a protracted period of institutional innovation that successively reduced both the privileges of special interest groups and the level of state interference in the lives of citizens. The static economic relationships of prior eras with their regulated prices, defined obligations, and rigid hierarchies were steadily undermined. The state no longer protected the status quo, and instead provided a great deal of latitude to experiment with “new ways of doing things”, a phrase which would later be adopted as a broad definition of technical change. The common law, with its emphasis on individual property rights that could not be infringed upon by the state, came to be regarded as immutable. The evenhanded treatment of locals and new arrivals under the law made England a magnet for those fleeing oppression elsewhere in the world, and an ideal place to conduct business.
Although the institutional environment which gave rise to the Industrial Revolution was quite stable, the business environment was extremely competitive. Property rights enshrined in common law provided both an incentive to profit from commercial activity and the legal right to enjoy the profits of speculative ventures.
This encouraged both entrepreneurship and third party investment in ventures that were inherently risky. These same incentives motivated scientific advances and the application of newly acquired knowledge to industrial production problems.
Property rights not only gave entrepreneurs and investors the incentive of profit but also provided protection for those whose rights to enjoy their property might be affected by commercial activity. Firms that infringed on the rights of others in their effort to dispose of noxious waste risked penalties ranging from fines to “cease and desist” orders, either of which would severely handicap their competitive position. In other words, whenever the adverse effects of discarded waste were recognized, the fines or injunctions to which firms were liable gave additional urgency to their efforts to eliminate waste when it constituted a nuisance” to others.
Early industrial processes inevitably involved large volumes of raw material inputs, and utilization of these raw materials more efficiently and the transformation of any residual waste products into items of commercial value were two thoroughly explored avenues to commercial success. The development of valuable by- products out of waste – just one example of the application of new knowledge – both improved living standards and benefited the environment. The risk associated with failing to innovate in an environment where competitors were extremely likely to do so also spurred experimentation with alternative products and processes. Competitive pressure was widely recognized as motivating an unrelenting war on waste.
Thus the feedback provided by market prices directed the process of innovation toward waste reduction, and competition injected a sense of urgency, while a legal system prepared to defend the rights of citizens from trespass and nuisance provided the stick, and the right to enjoy the profits served as the carrot. Consequently, firms found themselves under considerable pressure to eliminate waste in general and noxious waste in particular.
A prime example was the process whereby the gas widely used for lighting was obtained from coal.4 Distillation of gas from coal left a number of noxious waste products, the most problematic of which was coal tar. When production of large volumes of this by-product began, coal tar had a limited number of applications and disposing of the excess became a nightmare for those working in the field. The breakthrough came when it was discovered that impregnating timber with heavy oils derived from coal tar prolonged its useful life. This development, at a time when timber was heavily used in the construction of railroad and telegraph lines, significantly reduced deforestation. Subsequent development of the artificial dyestuff industry from the lighter and less voluminous fractions of coal tar oil after the accidental discovery of mauve in 1856 led to the collapse of the then considerable demand for various types of plants, lichens, trees, insects, mollusks, minerals and guano which had previously served as the raw material inputs for this trade.5 Once again, pressure to alleviate an industrial bottleneck made more efficient use of one natural raw material and eliminated demand for alternative raw materials in the process. Here and in many other instances, once the parallel development of science turned attention from the more obvious physical qualities of waste to their chemical attributes, its potential usefulness increased exponentially.
In North America in the late 19th century, meatpacking was the paradigmatic industry. Its transformation from a widely dispersed industry consisting of small local butchers into one that was highly concentrated and dominated by the Chicago meatpackers followed much the same pattern. The small volumes of waste produced by individual butchers were a problem, but the huge volumes of waste produced by the large packing plants threatened their existence and were dealt with accordingly. Inter-firm collaboration to eliminate waste problems resulted in the claim of the pork packers of the day that “everything was used except the squeal.” The revenue derived from formerly waste materials led to higher prices paid to farmers, a significant decline in the retail price of meat, and a benefit to the environment. The local small scale butchers were ultimately unable to compete with the larger operations, but waged a protracted political and public relations campaign against the packing industry which formed the basis for much of the original antitrust legislation in the United States and continues to color the public’s perception of the industry.
Many associated this period in North America’s history with unethical “robber barons”, but as one contemporary pointed out, “men of great business capacity and of untiring energy have been gathering up the fragments that nothing might go to waste” and that this has been “the chief source of the unprecedented fortunes of our times.”6 As an example he cited Standard Oil, whose success was in large measure due to the development of valuable by-products from refinery wastes, which, like coal tar, had previously been a significant liability. Solution of this particular waste disposal bottleneck created some three hundred byproducts, including paraffin, “one of the mines of wealth to the Standard Oil Company.”
The Origins of the Modern Regulatory Regime Nowadays the institutional arrangement within which businesses work are extremely convoluted as a consequence of the subsidies, regulations, tariffs and taxes which diminish economic efficiency.
These distortions to communication between businesses and the market stem from government’s growing preoccupation with growth and full employment, and its expanding role directing economic activity and alleviating social problems.
The laissez-faire philosophy was grounded in a view that the law was immutable. The “good intentions” school of public policy originated in the idea that every aspect of the human condition was susceptible to alteration, including its institutional infrastructure. Education and legislation came to be seen as mechanisms of improvement, and this gave rise to the notion that better laws might help alleviate social ills. Thus one rationale for expanding the professional civil service was to monitor the nation’s social problems and propose legislation to ameliorate those problems.
The initial objectives of government expansion were to maintain economic growth and establish a rudimentary social safety net targeting perceived social problems. Competition among nations led governments to play an increasingly active role promoting industrialization in “the national interest”. Unfortunately, the national interest tends to be a euphemism for “special interests”, and the interests of ordinary citizens are generally the first to be sacrificed for the “greater good”.
Although it may seem strange now, early in the 20th century the impressive levels of economic growth achieved by the Soviet Union provided much of the competitive pressure that led western governments to seek opportunities to accelerate economic growth. The Soviet Union’s underlying philosophy—at the opposite end of the spectrum to laissez faire, was that state control of the economy made dramatic increases in industrial output possible; the thinking also supposedly avoided the waste and environmental degradation many radical economists – but not, interestingly enough, Marx – attributed to market capitalism.
The benefits of economic planning were pursued in the Soviet system without using prices and profit incentives which are the market’s key mechanisms for coordinating resource utilization. Not surprisingly, the Soviet Union intentionally obliterated property rights, common law protection, and market competition – exactly the institutional arrangements that enable the market’s invisible hand to allocate resources efficiently – because they were incompatible with the planning mechanism. The economic growth in Soviet bloc countries was impressive, but it didn’t result from the efficiency enhancing innovation identified earlier as the hallmark of development. Indeed, the institutional framework of the Soviet system was intentionally hostile to precisely the kind of innovation that wages an unrelenting war on waste. In effect, the Soviet system threw away the “development compass” and growth resulted primarily from inefficiently processing ever increasing volumes of resources. The trajectory of Soviet innovation diverged dramatically from that occurring in market-oriented economies, and the massive dislocation that occurred when the Soviet Union collapsed reflected that divergence.
Despite its strong growth, in terms of all the other dimensions of development – its ability to manage environmental problems, use its natural resources efficiently, control pollution and raise living standards – the Soviet system performed extremely poorly. Inefficient use of massive volumes of natural resources to maintain growth entailed a huge environmental cost. Most importantly, environmental damage tended to increase, rather than decrease, over time.
It must be acknowledged, of course, that the superior performance of mixed economies in terms of their environmental record was obvious after the collapse of the Soviet system. Unfortunately, our own governments now also have a vested interest in promoting growth and maintaining full employment. When these objectives are superimposed on the economy, business decisions take on a character quite distinct from those that prevailed under laissez-faire conditions. When price signals are distorted by government intervention, the “development compass” gyrates wildly, and much of the growth that results is obtained by using more resources inefficiently. Efforts to study the financial and environmental cost of subsidies and other interventions bear this out.7
In much less dramatic fashion than in the Soviet Union, efforts to accelerate economic growth in the West were facilitated by weakening the rights of individuals “for the greater good”. Erosion of property rights evident since the mid-19th century made it increasingly difficult for those affected by pollution to obtain redress through the legal system.8 In the process the courts came to accept the view that pollution was just a fact of modern life and hence necessary for growth to continue. As the rights of individuals were relentlessly subordinated to those of more influential groups, industrialization could proceed at any cost. By removing a crucial stimulus to environmentally friendly innovation, the erosion of property rights helped perpetuate much less sustainable practices than would otherwise have been the case. This same phenomenon is now evident around the world where industrialization is being enthusiastically pursued without the constraint of property rights that originally modified the process in Victorian Britain.
Attitudes to big business and the environment both played pivotal roles in handing government its environmental protection mandate. Public distrust of business has a long history. In North America this distrust manifest itself in campaigns against oligopolies such as the Chicago meatpackers, the grain trade and the railways, and in the demonizing of “robber barons”. In contrast with Europe, where anti-capitalist sentiments were strongest in the urban working class, in North America these same undercurrents were evident on the agricultural frontier. It was precisely this region that was hit hardest by the Depression and where the election of the first socialist government in North America – the CCF in Saskatchewan – occurred. Environmental problems were not, however, seen as a serious social problem in North America until the mid-1960s. By this time property rights had long been deprived of their ability to discourage “trespass and nuisance” under common law. 9 In North America, increased environmental awareness, coupled with an underlying distrust of big business laid the foundation for a regulatory regime with a strong anti-business bias. Business had “despoiling the environment” added to its rap sheet, and government added environmental protection to its mandate.
Modern Regulatory Regimes
Sustainable development can only occur when prices accurately reflect market feedback, where incentives justify inherently risky innovations, and when competition drives the innovation process by penalizing failure to keep up. To pursue green innovation, businesses must have both the incentive and the freedom to act. Unfortunately, increased government management of the economy sharply curbs both, disrupting the relationship upon which sustainable development depends.
Interventions which explicitly target environmental problems as a “social ill” are frequently ineffective and all are costly in terms of resources that might otherwise have served a more useful purpose. Subsidies given to a variety of industries including agriculture, energy production and transportation encourage consumption of resources that would not otherwise occur. It was pointed out over 30 years ago that no scarcity has ever occurred when freely determined prices are used as the rationing mechanism. Each recurring eruption of concern over resource scarcity derives from government interventions that distort the price mechanism.10
In contrast to common law remedies for negligence, trespass, nuisance and strict liability, which all increase the economic risks inherent in discharging wastes without mandating specific remedial action, modern waste management regulations implicitly treat industrial by-products as nuisances to be destroyed rather than recycled and reclaimed as useful by-products.11 Regulatory interventions have thereby erected barriers against a popular avenue of innovation, making it more difficult to create wealth out of industrial waste. Although green innovation is endorsed by an impressive list of North American government agencies, legislation enforced by those same agencies closes off many potentially fruitful lines of investigation. Much environmental legislation adopts a “guilty until proven innocent” approach to business wastes, which imposes additional burdens while discouraging efforts to develop innovative solutions.
Governments frequently intervene to reduce the commercial risk faced by businesses, but increase the risk businesses face from a politically driven institutional environment, neatly reversing the situation under laissez-faire. When government involves itself in the economy it introduces a new category of uncertainty into the equation. Rules, taxes and subsidies may be introduced, but they may also be modified or abandoned. The institutional environment in which businesses currently operate is therefore subject to drastic, abrupt, and potentially devastating change which diverts attention and resources from longer term competitive strategy to short term tactics. As a direct consequence, businesses are encouraged to deemphasize product and process innovation and to exert an inordinate amount of effort and resources lobbying for favourable treatment under existing and pending legislation instead.
A focus on managing the institutional environment leads firms to form industry associations that strive to protect the status quo and raise barriers against competition from new entrants and off-shore suppliers. Governments also slow innovation and reduce business risk by propping-up ailing firms, rewarding inefficient use of resources and discouraging new entrants. Even before the current round of economic problems governments routinely intervened to mitigate the risks of select groups. Crop insurance for farmers and property insurance for those constructing houses in areas susceptible to flood or hurricane damage – which are of no interest to private sector insurers for obvious reasons — are prime examples.
The appetite of government for revenue, and the role of working people as an important source of that revenue tend to raise the cost of labour relative to other factors of production. This alone encourages firms to reduce innovation (because R&D is a relatively labour intensive activity) and to invest in labour saving process technology which tends to lock the business into doing something a particular way for an extended period of time. Government intervention to promote growth also tends to subsidize the use of virgin natural resources, encourage consumption and disposal, and discourage product durability thereby introducing wholesale bias against efficiency, recycling and reuse.
The Choice
The Liberal party’s “Green Shift” agenda is a recent example of what is often termed the “natural capitalism” alternative, after a popular book with the same title.12 Natural capitalists generally document compelling examples of government subsidies and incentives that have caused serious environmental damage but then argue that a different set of taxes and incentives could modify the behaviour of consumers and businesses in order to ensure high standards of environmental stewardship. The choice they offer is moderate pain now or more severe pain later. The pain they acknowledge is lower standards of living. They tend to gloss over the reduction in individual freedoms implicit in their prescription.
Nonetheless, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was influenced by scientists who argue in favour of international intervention initiatives “comparable to the mobilization for World War Two”13 to implement aggressive programs targeted at slashing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing society for the shocks that will “inevitably” result from climate change.
Some go so far as to suggest that democratic institutions prevent the implementation of the radical measures they believe are necessary to save the planet, and that replacement of liberal democracies by a “form of authoritarian government by experts” is a necessary precondition for sustainable societies. 14
Our work, however, suggests that sustainable societies are those in which government intervention in the economy is minimal, and that climate change Cassandras are just the latest special interest group shouldering their way into the public trough. Ed Broadbent is right to call for economic growth and the protection of individual rights, but wrong to imply that government can facilitate the desirable growth that development generates. Unfortunately, government efforts to promote unsustainable growth in the Soviet Union have been emulated elsewhere. The cost borne by individuals has been lowered living standards, limitations on individual freedom and unnecessary environmental degradation.
The alternative advocated here is to reinstate and enforce individual rights and to encourage innovation that uses available resources more efficiently, raises living standards, minimizes environmental damage and avoids diverting public sector resources away from those areas where government can have a positive impact – by letting businesses respond unimpeded to market signals.
Ultimately societies face a choice between development, a trajectory along which consumption and production increase through successively more efficient use of all categories of resources – including raw materials and the environment — and alternative trajectories which, by definition do not exhibit the same tendency to efficiency. This choice ultimately depends on the extent to which businesses, individuals and governments take responsibility for their actions. Uploading responsibility from individuals and businesses to the state over the past century involved a significant cost in terms of diminished personal freedom and proved disastrous for the environment wherever it occurred.
Conclusion
Early industrial activities consumed large volumes of raw materials, with a corresponding impact on the natural environment. Waste of resources in the production process was penalized by the competitive environment of laissez-faire in which entrepreneurs of the time operated. In instances where costs of waste disposal were high or the potential for legal action significant, businesses made considerable, concerted, and often costly efforts to reduce those liabilities. Prominent among those efforts were attempts to eliminate disposal costs by generating revenue from by-products. That search, not yet constrained by regulation, for processes which used raw materials more efficiently and for less costly means of disposing of wastes yielded a broad array of “green innovations” which both raised living standards and reduced environmental impacts.
Once governments begin to intervene in the economy they face much the same problem as the planned economies of the former Soviet bloc: they seek to expand growth by undermining the institutions protecting individual rights upon which development depends. All regulation is a form of government planning that replaces the decisions of individuals and businesses operating under market constraints with those of policy makers and legislators who are distant from local realities and who are dealing with political rather than market incentives.
In North America, government has distorted the technical change process to the point that the trajectory of innovation is significantly offset from the one reflecting direct interaction between economic actors and undistorted market signals. Although in a relative sense the environmental damage that results is less than that incurred under the Soviet system, in an absolute sense it exceeds by a wide margin what might have been had these distortions been avoided.
The apparent contradiction over environmental stewardship that arises from the view that “more regulation of private business is better”, which prevailed over much of the past century in the West, and “a lot is too much”, based on the experience of planned economies is thus resolved: although central planning along Soviet lines is counterproductive in terms of the environment, “top-down” regulation in the name of the environment in market economies suffers many of the same shortcomings. Improving environmental performance in market economies occurred despite, rather than because of, increased government intervention.
Liberating the invisible hand from its regulatory gauntlet would benefit the environment, but it is also critical to recognize that the “green thumb” operates most effectively when businesses are free to innovate in their own self interest and when an efficient and impartial legal system designed to enforce the rights of individuals protects both the public and the environment. This is a particular concern in Canada, where property rights are explicitly excluded from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The strongest arguments against Soviet-style central planning today would be its inability to deliver the high’standards of living associated with market economies, and the loss of individual freedom inherent in such a’system. The environmental problems caused by its inefficient growth provided the main focus for opposition to the Soviet system throughout the USSR during its lifetime, and when it collapsed, the full environmental’cost of Soviet-style systems became more widely known. Why then do we still remain susceptible to the’dubious argument that more top-down planning can promote green innovation, and so complacent about the’lower standards of living and additional restrictions on the rights of individuals implicit in more government’intervention?
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References:
1 Ed Broadbent, “Barbarism Lite: The Political Attack on Social Rights, 1979-2009” The Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History public lecture, February 19, 2009. www.arts.yorku.ca/welcome.
2 See “A ‘Power Shift’: Conservative Principles for the Environment” by Kenneth Green in Issue 2, Volume 2 of C2C Journal.
3 A recent example is Linda McQuaig’s “All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism” (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2001).
4 References to the extensive work of Pierre Desrochers on these and numerous other examples of green innovation both recent and historical are found in Andrew Reed and Pierre Desrochers “The Invisible Green Thumb” Mercatus Policy Primer, October, 2008 available at www.mercatus.org or www.eratos.erin.utoronto.ca/desrochers/research.htm.
5 Simon Garfield, Mauve: How One Man invented a Color that Changed the World (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001).
6 G. P. Perry, Wealth from Waste or Gathering up the Fragments (New York & London: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1908) pp. 73-75.
7 De Moore & Calamai (1997) “Subsidizing Unsustainable Development: Undermining the Earth with Public Funds” a study commissioned by the Earth Council, quoted in Maurice Strong (2001) Where in the World are We Going? (Toronto: Vintage Canada – Random House of Canada Ltd.) p. 364; Peter M. Kjellingbro and Maria Skotte (2005) (Copenhagen, Environmental Assessment Institute) available at http://imv.net.dynamicwebldk/Admin/Public.Downladaspx?files/filer/rapporter/diverse/harmful_subsidies.pdf and OECD Subsidy Reform and Sustainable Development: Economic Environmental and Social Aspects (Paris, OECD 2006).
8 Richard Pipes Property and Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000) provides a comprehensive examination of the development and importance of property rights in Britain, the absence of such rights in Russia and its implications, and the general erosion of those rights in the West during the 20th century and its consequences.
9 Interestingly, environmental issues were a matter of public concern much earlier in the USSR. An extremely useful exposition of how environmental problems resulting from a failure to enforce existing laws and the regulations of one jurisdiction were blamed on “corporate greed run amok” is Jonathon Adler’s article “Fables of the Cuyahoga: Reconstructing a History of Environmental Protection” Fordham Environmental Law Journal Vol. 14, No. 1 (Fall 2002) Available at www.jhadler.net.
10 E.C. Pasour Jr. “Austerity Waste and Need” The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty vol. 28, no.12 (December,1978) 743-755 (www.thefreemanonline.org), and E. C. Pasour Jr, “Conservation, ‘Xinefficiency’ and Efficient Use of Natural Resources” Journal of Libertarian Studies vol. 3, no. 4, 371-390 (www.fee.org).
11 Fuller exposition on this point is to be found in Pierre Desrochers, “Industrial Ecology and the Rediscovery of Inter-Firm Recycling Linkages: Some Historical Perspective and Policy implications” Industrial and Corporate Change, November 2002, pp. 1031-57.
12 Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (New York, Boston & London: Little, Brown & Co., 1999).
13 Canadian IPPC member L.D (Danny) Harvey, quoted in the article “Climate Scientists Want War on Warming” by Margaret Munro and Mike DeSouza, CanWest News Service. (http://www.canada.com.components/print/aspz?id=fbfl0c567309-424c-b199-38056e671).
14 David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy (Westport CT: Preager Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group 2007).