WEBVTT NOTE What the Evangelical Environmentalists Don't Consider About Economics 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 The Theory of Money and Credit 2 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:45.000 It is a great honor to be here today and to be the inaugural lecturer and I am thankful to Lew for writing this honor and to the Church Foundation as well for making funds available. 3 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:53.000 I was not aware, I have to say, that the Ludwig von Mises Institute has changed its name to the Luhmbann Mises Institute. 4 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:20.000 Some of the most common arguments advanced against the Christ system are those based on religious faith. 5 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.500 In fact, all forms of stateism can be tied to some forms of faith. 6 00:01:25.500 --> 00:01:30.500 It may be a faith in a human being or a committee of human beings. 7 00:01:30.500 --> 00:01:38.000 Certainly, socialism requires a great deal of faith and the abilities of central planners to collect relevant, 8 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:45.000 non-quantifiable, up-to-date information about the desires of millions of remote individuals. 9 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:58.000 It requires more faith, I think, to believe that a government can prescribe an efficient allocation of resources and methods of production to meet the most important of those desires. 10 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:08.000 This may not be the sort of faith evidenced by attendance at a church, synagogue, or mosque, but it is faith nonetheless, and in a sense it is religious. 11 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:18.000 As the status Bernard de Saint Croix wrote over a century ago, the modern nation is a history and a religion rather than a clear-cut idea. 12 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:25.000 Using the term religious faith then requires us to cover too much ground, so I will be more specific. 13 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:31.000 I shall deal in particular with the views of those identifying themselves as modern evangelical Christians. 14 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:36.000 Modern evangelicals have attacked the market economy on several fronts. 15 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:55.000 Residuals, parent church organizations and entire denominations have advocated government-run welfare systems, minimum wages, restrictions on hiring and firing employees, monetary manipulation by governments, trade restrictions and other major interventions. 16 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:03.000 Frequently, no attempt is made to show that the free market is, at some fundamental level, inconsistent with the Bible. 17 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:10.000 Recently evangelicals have been mimicking the secular environmentalists' assault on the market economy. 18 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:24.000 Pollution, deforestation, endangered and extinct species, food shortages and global warming are all, they say, evidence of our failure to be good stewards over creation. 19 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:32.000 Overconsumption, particularly in the industrialized parts of the world, is responsible, they say. 20 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:43.000 Personal frugality, coupled with government regulation and fraud along the unrepentant SUV driving glutton, is the answer. 21 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:50.000 Late last year, the Evangelical Environmental Network launched its What Would Jesus Drive campaign, 22 00:03:50.000 --> 00:04:00.000 which associated low gas mileage with immorality and advocated stricter government fuel economy regulations. 23 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:10.000 So there is a great deal of activity on the environmental front and it is perhaps the most vigorous attack for markets that evangelicals have launched in the last 20 years. 24 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:16.000 This attack is not coming from Gaia worshiping cultists or fringe groups within the churches. 25 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:27.000 Major Protestant denominations and some groups of Roman Catholics have issued documents stating that caring for creation is inconsistent with the market economy. 26 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:38.000 Of course, many of these groups have stated that social policy was a better part of the century, so anti-market environmentalism may be viewed as a variation of the same old thing. 27 00:04:38.000 --> 00:04:50.000 Not all believers have participated in this attack. There are quite a few, particularly in the more theologically conservative denominations, who have strong pro-market views. 28 00:04:50.000 --> 00:05:00.000 But in most churches and seminaries today, a majority have been convinced that when it comes to the environment, the market economy cannot be trusted. 29 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:06.000 For most Christians, the idea that humans should be good stewards of creation is easy to swallow. 30 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:11.000 The trouble, as usual, begins when the particulars must be addressed. 31 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:16.000 How does one know which use of a resource constitutes good stewardship? 32 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:22.120 and Stewardship. Can the government identify poor stewardship and take steps to correct 33 00:05:22.120 --> 00:05:30.320 a misallocation of resources? Modern evangelical environmentalism cannot solve basic questions 34 00:05:30.320 --> 00:05:38.320 of resource allocation because it has rejected the foundations of rational economic calculation. 35 00:05:38.320 --> 00:05:44.280 Like their non-Christian counterparts, evangelical environmentalists regard private property 36 00:05:44.280 --> 00:05:53.480 as a source of environmental problems rather than the cause, rather than the solution. 37 00:05:53.480 --> 00:06:00.280 Writing on the tragedy of the commons, Warren Wilkinson, a prominent figure among evangelical environmentalists, 38 00:06:00.280 --> 00:06:13.180 claims that the overgrazing of the common pasture is due to private ownership of the cattle, not access to the property. 39 00:06:13.180 --> 00:06:22.180 The first problem he writes is based on the hypothesis of individual interests detached from ties with nature, humanity or God. 40 00:06:22.180 --> 00:06:40.180 So it is almost inevitable, he says, that resources held in common will be misused, or the common actions which need to be taken will not be taken unless someone can speak for the whole interconnected system, not just for one individual's interest. 41 00:06:40.180 --> 00:06:55.180 For recently Calvin DeWitt has argued that the cause of creation has value, we should preserve it as we would a classic work of art. 42 00:06:55.180 --> 00:07:04.180 He writes, when it comes to masterpieces created by human artists, respectors of Rembrandt keep and take care of Rembrandt's paintings. 43 00:07:04.180 --> 00:07:11.180 and much more so, should respectors and worshippers of the Creator keep and take care of the Creator's works. 44 00:07:11.180 --> 00:07:16.180 He would statement as an example a major problem within evangelical environmentalism, 45 00:07:16.180 --> 00:07:23.180 the denial of individual valuations of resources in accordance with individual goals. 46 00:07:23.180 --> 00:07:30.180 DeWitt assumes, in effect, that individuals have the same tastes and preferences and do not come up with different plans. 47 00:07:30.180 --> 00:07:40.180 Therefore, de Wit is to be logically consistent, every person's subjective valuation of a particular natural resource must be identical. 48 00:07:40.180 --> 00:07:44.180 This explains why de Wit chose a Rembrandt as an example. 49 00:07:44.180 --> 00:07:49.180 De Wit assumes that we would not think of using a Rembrandt for anything other than visual contemplation. 50 00:07:49.180 --> 00:07:54.180 Indeed, most of us would never dream of using a Rembrandt to pass a hole in the roof. 51 00:07:54.180 --> 00:07:58.180 We think it appropriate that Rembrandts stay behind velvet ropes untouched. 52 00:07:58.180 --> 00:08:04.180 For most people, Rembrandts fulfill goals that require hysterical preservation. 53 00:08:04.180 --> 00:08:10.180 And most of nature is not so uniquely suited to the fulfillment of one purpose as is a Rembrandt. 54 00:08:10.180 --> 00:08:18.180 Parts of nature have value to the individual according to how well each meets that individual's specific goals. 55 00:08:18.180 --> 00:08:26.180 Unlike a Rembrandt where its highest value of use is, in most cases, its visual appearance, a tree is more versatile. 56 00:08:26.180 --> 00:08:32.180 In both cases, value is inseparable from the achievement of individual goals. 57 00:08:32.180 --> 00:08:40.180 DeWitt and others overlook the possibility that an object might be useful in achieving multiple mutually exclusive goals. 58 00:08:40.180 --> 00:08:47.180 Yet it's clear that the same natural resource, an acre of land, for example, might be used to feed the hungry, 59 00:08:47.180 --> 00:08:52.180 house the homeless, heal the sick, clothe the naked, or teach the ignorant, 60 00:08:52.180 --> 00:08:56.180 as well as for simply viewing and appreciating the wonder of it all. 61 00:08:56.180 --> 00:08:59.180 All of these goals have a place in a Christian's life. 62 00:08:59.180 --> 00:09:06.180 The difficulty lies in deciding which goal to achieve with each piece of the created order. 63 00:09:06.180 --> 00:09:10.180 Some evangelical environmentalists have attempted to pattern this line of reasoning 64 00:09:10.180 --> 00:09:13.180 by claiming that it is too anthropocentric. 65 00:09:13.180 --> 00:09:18.180 They argue that the value of some part of nature, say a tree, 66 00:09:18.180 --> 00:09:26.180 It originates not in how well the tree meets human goals, but in the value that the Creator places upon the tree. 67 00:09:26.180 --> 00:09:28.180 As Stephen Zollman Prasor wrote, 68 00:09:28.180 --> 00:09:35.180 God's creatures are valuable not because of their usefulness to humans, though some are useful, indeed essential to us. 69 00:09:35.180 --> 00:09:41.180 Rocks and trees, birds and animals, are valuable simply because God made them. 70 00:09:41.180 --> 00:09:49.180 Their value resides in their being creations of a value in God, not in their being a means to some human being. 71 00:09:49.180 --> 00:09:56.180 First of all, from a Christian perspective, God's valuations are fundamentally different from man's valuations. 72 00:09:56.180 --> 00:10:04.180 Economists speak of value as being related to how much one is willing to sacrifice of one thing in order to have one more unit of another thing. 73 00:10:04.180 --> 00:10:10.180 But for God, no such trade-off is necessary. He never needs to choose between a red-cockaded woodpecker and a tree. 74 00:10:10.180 --> 00:10:14.180 3. He can have both merely by thinking them into existence. 75 00:10:14.180 --> 00:10:20.180 Distinctions in moral values are valid for God and us. 76 00:10:20.180 --> 00:10:27.180 Truth is to be valued over falsehood, faithfulness over infidelity, true worship over idolatry and so on. 77 00:10:27.180 --> 00:10:32.180 But to speak of God having to make economic trade-offs as we do is inconsistent with Christianity. 78 00:10:32.180 --> 00:10:38.180 Second, more to the point of this lecture, attempting to have economic valuations without humans 79 00:10:38.180 --> 00:10:42.180 for Humans leaves us no way to discover these valuations. 80 00:10:42.180 --> 00:10:46.180 Bill McCredder wants to separate value from human goals. 81 00:10:46.180 --> 00:10:51.180 He says God's creatures are valuable not because of their usefulness to humans. 82 00:10:51.180 --> 00:10:55.180 Well, as much as you may dislike it, you really have no alternative. 83 00:10:55.180 --> 00:11:00.180 Because we humans are finite, we must value in an economic sense. 84 00:11:00.180 --> 00:11:06.180 None of these advocates of Christ-free stewardship have been able to locate divine revelation 85 00:11:06.180 --> 00:11:12.180 that informs us of the proper trade-off between replicated woodpeckers and trees. 86 00:11:12.180 --> 00:11:19.180 In fact, the dynamic economy would seem to indicate that continuing divine revelation is necessary. 87 00:11:19.180 --> 00:11:25.180 I know of no evangelical environmentalists who claim access to this kind of information. 88 00:11:25.180 --> 00:11:32.180 Certainly, our individual economic valuations flow from our moral values. 89 00:11:32.180 --> 00:11:39.680 And we Christians regard ourselves as having some divine revelation on what actions are moral evils and which actions are good. 90 00:11:39.680 --> 00:11:46.680 So, for example, Christians regard rape as having a negative economic evaluation because it is a moral evil. 91 00:11:46.680 --> 00:11:49.680 Thus, Christians would pay to have rape eliminated. 92 00:11:49.680 --> 00:11:57.680 Christians have a moral obligation to appreciate God's creation, so trees and wildlife have a positive evaluation. 93 00:11:57.680 --> 00:12:10.680 The problem arises when we must choose between the trees and housing of the homeless, since we humans cannot create ex nihilo, scarcity of wilderness, and scarcity of housing are real problems for us. 94 00:12:10.680 --> 00:12:17.680 Without further information to help us decide which need is more pressing, we are left in chaos. 95 00:12:17.680 --> 00:12:24.680 Good intentions alone are insufficient to make choices among multiple moral goals. 96 00:12:24.680 --> 00:12:34.680 As economist P.J. Hill wrote, good intentions cannot ensure that people manage resources appropriately or prevent environmental degradation. 97 00:12:34.680 --> 00:12:46.680 Given that much of what we see in the world is the unintended consequence of human interaction, simply reforming our intentions isn't inadequate policy prescription. 98 00:12:46.680 --> 00:12:57.680 Most of the evangelical statements on the environment reveal an inability to solve the basic problem of deciding between alternative beneficial uses of the creative world. 99 00:12:57.680 --> 00:13:03.680 One example is an environmental statement from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. 100 00:13:03.680 --> 00:13:12.680 This document states that caring, serving, keeping, loving and living by wisdom sum up what is meant by acting as God's stewards of the earth. 101 00:13:12.680 --> 00:13:27.680 There is no way to tell from this how to balance the goal of environmental preservation with the goal of satisfying some other human need, though the authors apparently believe that the current trade-offs are inappropriate. 102 00:13:27.680 --> 00:13:33.680 The authors have concluded in advance that the market is not the answer to their lack of information. 103 00:13:33.680 --> 00:13:40.680 We have left with vague platitudes about stewardship with no explanation of how that stewardship is to be accomplished. 104 00:13:40.680 --> 00:13:49.480 Paul Hain explains that we will almost certainly fail to achieve our objectives if we simply have people to become better stewards. 105 00:13:49.480 --> 00:13:54.980 No one knows what stewardship of creation implies for his or her own actions. 106 00:13:54.980 --> 00:14:01.680 Exhortations to change our lifestyles just do not give us sufficient information. 107 00:14:01.680 --> 00:14:08.880 Advocates of marketless stewardship seem unaware of the severity of the problems the socialist planet faces. 108 00:14:08.880 --> 00:14:12.880 Yet these problems were pointed out over 80 years ago by Ludwig von Mises. 109 00:14:12.880 --> 00:14:20.880 In his book Socialism, Mises argued that because economic valuation was ultimately subjective, 110 00:14:20.880 --> 00:14:28.880 the protection of private property and voluntary exchange is indispensable if an economy is to be rational. 111 00:14:28.880 --> 00:14:37.880 In a complex world, we are constrained to use prices to assist in determining the particular uses of resources 112 00:14:37.880 --> 00:14:43.880 that will best reduce the problems of scarcity. If we refuse, we are left with chaos. 113 00:14:43.880 --> 00:14:47.880 This is a core problem with evangelical environmentalism today. 114 00:14:47.880 --> 00:14:53.880 It has no rational method for economic calculation. Instead, we have appeals to inner wisdom. 115 00:14:53.880 --> 00:14:59.880 The Lord Wilkinson wrote that we should not govern our use of creation with price information. 116 00:14:59.880 --> 00:15:04.880 We should, he says, make wise and frugal use of it. 117 00:15:04.880 --> 00:15:10.680 This sounds high-minded, but it's completely meaningless when it comes to making actual decisions. 118 00:15:10.680 --> 00:15:16.080 How do we know what uses of resources are wise? How do we know what level of use is frugal? 119 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:25.180 Even the best of intentions cannot overcome the absence of price information that tells us how frugal to be with various resources. 120 00:15:25.180 --> 00:15:34.680 Furthermore, as Mises argued, the presence of profits and losses is also a necessary ingredient for the efficient production and distribution of goods. 121 00:15:34.680 --> 00:15:39.240 Christian stewardship does not benefit from doing away with the market system. 122 00:15:39.240 --> 00:15:44.840 Prices, wages, and profits provide a way to count the cost of an endeavor, 123 00:15:44.840 --> 00:15:50.600 which Jesus Christ said was a necessary part of wise decision-making. 124 00:15:50.600 --> 00:15:55.040 Paul Payne provided a wonderful example of how acting of good intentions 125 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:59.240 without price information can actually lead to poor stewardship. 126 00:15:59.240 --> 00:16:03.880 He said, Suppose that every inhabitant of Los Angeles was miraculously converted overnight 127 00:16:03.880 --> 00:16:06.880 of the World, the University of St. Francis of Assisi. 128 00:16:06.880 --> 00:16:08.880 We would no doubt see major changes 129 00:16:08.880 --> 00:16:10.880 into the behavior of Los Angelinos, 130 00:16:10.880 --> 00:16:12.880 but I would not be at all confident 131 00:16:12.880 --> 00:16:14.880 that we would see a decline in air pollution 132 00:16:14.880 --> 00:16:16.880 caused by the automobile. 133 00:16:16.880 --> 00:16:18.880 Each newly-sacrified Los Angelino, 134 00:16:18.880 --> 00:16:20.880 eager now to bring benefits and blessings 135 00:16:20.880 --> 00:16:22.880 to all other beings, 136 00:16:22.880 --> 00:16:24.880 would still need this car to do so effectively, 137 00:16:24.880 --> 00:16:26.880 given the physical layout of the city 138 00:16:26.880 --> 00:16:28.880 and its environs, 139 00:16:28.880 --> 00:16:30.880 just as any current Los Angelino 140 00:16:30.880 --> 00:16:32.880 desires to do any good, 141 00:16:32.880 --> 00:16:43.880 This is a valuable asset for getting food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, for visiting those sick or in prison, and for earning income with which to do any of these things more effectively. 142 00:16:43.880 --> 00:16:56.880 Citizens of Los Angeles who make the good stewards' choice and leave their cars at home end up getting less done, breathing more exhaust fumes, and dying earlier than those who refuse to behave like a steward. 143 00:16:56.880 --> 00:16:59.880 That looks like very bad stewardship. 144 00:16:59.880 --> 00:17:11.380 One way to see the anti-market tendencies in modern evangelical environmentalism is to look at the official statements of some of the largest Protestant denominations in certain Roman Catholic organizations. 145 00:17:11.380 --> 00:17:19.380 As I've said, this antagonism toward market freedoms is not universal. There are many Christians who hold pro-market views. 146 00:17:19.380 --> 00:17:24.380 But let's take a look at some of the documents on the environment that have appeared in the last 10 or 12 years. 147 00:17:24.380 --> 00:17:33.380 Some of these official statements are lowest common denominator, platitudinous recommendations, like the document produced by the Wesleyan denomination. 148 00:17:33.380 --> 00:17:43.380 Now, I'm good to all of you. You're all members of some denomination. I'll get to you eventually. 149 00:17:43.380 --> 00:17:49.380 Seek informational environmental issues. Avoid polluting as much as possible. 150 00:17:49.380 --> 00:18:11.380 Examine the pattern of our consumption and avoid unnecessary expense, unless presumed that when the authors say avoid polluting as much as possible, or to avoid unnecessary expense, they expect individual decision makers to take price information into account when deciding whether it's possible or unnecessary. 151 00:18:11.380 --> 00:18:18.380 To the denominations credit, all of these recommendations except one can be achieved without resorting to state intervention. 152 00:18:18.380 --> 00:18:24.380 The exception is a call to support political efforts, to make recycling available where it is not. 153 00:18:24.380 --> 00:18:32.380 And I was tempted at this point to go in and follow in the tradition that David Gordon had laid out in Mises' review, 154 00:18:32.380 --> 00:18:41.380 concentrating on that failing and elaborating on that, how he would phrase it. 155 00:18:41.380 --> 00:18:45.380 Other denominations make more comprehensive attacks on the market. 156 00:18:45.380 --> 00:19:00.380 Hope for a Global Future, a document produced by Presbyterian Church, USA, condemns market-based resource management as unjust, but does not provide an alternative to the market's role in calculation. 157 00:19:00.380 --> 00:19:08.380 Somehow, however, the authors have managed to calculate that our current rate of consumption is too rapid. 158 00:19:08.380 --> 00:19:14.380 In a section on resource exhaustion, the PCUSA statement asserts that we are, as it says, 159 00:19:14.380 --> 00:19:23.380 living beyond our planetary means, maximizing current benefits, particularly for the affluent, at the expense of future generations. 160 00:19:23.380 --> 00:19:31.380 And while the document admits that better technology and substitutes can forestall resource exhaustion, it states, 161 00:19:31.380 --> 00:19:37.380 there really is no substitute for the conservation of non-renewable resources. 162 00:19:37.380 --> 00:19:42.880 Predictably, the question of how much conservation is necessary is left unanswered. 163 00:19:42.880 --> 00:19:48.380 Also predictably, prices are viewed as inadequate as a rationing mechanism. 164 00:19:48.380 --> 00:19:54.380 As document says, current market prices made higher by temporary shortages 165 00:19:54.380 --> 00:19:57.880 tell us only about near-term demand and supply conditions. 166 00:19:57.880 --> 00:20:02.880 They rarely anticipate the longer-term effects of resource depletion. 167 00:20:02.880 --> 00:20:05.880 By waiting to recognize environmental scarcity, 168 00:20:05.880 --> 00:20:11.880 It will probably be too late to conserve non-renewable resources for the sake of future generations. 169 00:20:11.880 --> 00:20:20.880 So we might ask, how do we know how to strike a balance between conservation of resources for the future and consumption today? 170 00:20:20.880 --> 00:20:29.880 Our Presbyterian churchmen are left groping in the dark for answers while implying publicly that they know the correct balance. 171 00:20:29.880 --> 00:20:39.880 Ironically, when the Presbyterian statement provides examples of resource scarcity problems, 172 00:20:39.880 --> 00:20:43.880 they are traceable to an absence of a pricing mechanism. 173 00:20:43.880 --> 00:20:47.880 We mentioned the scarcity of potable water in certain parts of the world, 174 00:20:47.880 --> 00:20:52.880 the reduced yields of open ocean fisheries, where drinking water is scarce, 175 00:20:52.880 --> 00:21:00.880 is typically because it is a common access resource, not privately owned and rationed by the price system. 176 00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:09.880 Likewise, open ocean fisheries are producing smaller catches because property rights and fishing banks are largely unprotected. 177 00:21:09.880 --> 00:21:18.880 An abysmal resolution on energy policy supports extensive government intervention to achieve conservation and reduce pollution. 178 00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:24.640 The resolution urges government to raise federal fuel economy standards, 179 00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:30.800 subsidize the production and purchase of clean vehicles, 180 00:21:30.800 --> 00:21:35.280 use taxes to fund renewable energy research and development, 181 00:21:35.280 --> 00:21:43.680 include carbon dioxide as a pollutant, which I guess would make us all the important law of the EPA, 182 00:21:43.680 --> 00:21:55.680 and Ban Drilling in the Alaska Natural Wildlife Refuge and subsidized energy consumption by low-income households and a variety of other suggestions. 183 00:21:55.680 --> 00:22:06.680 Price information is regarded by the Episcopal Executive Council as irrelevant or inconsistent with an appropriate allocation of resources. 184 00:22:06.680 --> 00:22:12.680 Each of their policy recommendations is in accord with the socialist ideal of central planning 185 00:22:12.680 --> 00:22:18.680 planning rather than the market system of decentralized individual planning. 186 00:22:18.680 --> 00:22:23.680 Governing fuel economy standards, just to take one example, will misallocate resources 187 00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:25.680 and make drivers worse off. 188 00:22:25.680 --> 00:22:31.680 Drivers have decided that the fuel economy is only one of many desirable automobile characteristics. 189 00:22:31.680 --> 00:22:36.680 We want cash mileage, but we also want safety, comfort and performance. 190 00:22:36.680 --> 00:22:43.680 In a free economy, each person has the freedom to decide what combination of those features they want in the vehicle, 191 00:22:43.680 --> 00:22:50.680 and will have better information about their own preferences than any government regulatory agency could possibly possess. 192 00:22:50.680 --> 00:22:56.680 The cheapness of gasoline in the United States today, even considering gasoline taxes, 193 00:22:56.680 --> 00:23:01.680 tells the vehicle buyer how scarce gasoline is relative to other goods, 194 00:23:01.680 --> 00:23:08.680 Without knowing the volume of oil reserves, the rate of new oil discoveries, the uses 195 00:23:08.680 --> 00:23:13.180 the drivers in New Zealand might have for that oil, the advances in technologies of 196 00:23:13.180 --> 00:23:18.180 extracting or refining oil, or anything else about the process, the buyer has enough information 197 00:23:18.180 --> 00:23:21.680 to make an appropriate energy conservation decision. 198 00:23:21.680 --> 00:23:26.680 If the oil reserves decline or supplies from the Persian Gulf are threatened, the price 199 00:23:26.680 --> 00:23:30.680 of gasoline will immediately rise and people will begin conserving gasoline. 200 00:23:30.680 --> 00:23:43.680 In short, any event that would lead a well-informed, well-intentioned environmentalist to promote gasoline conservation should, through the market process, result in just that. 201 00:23:43.680 --> 00:23:54.680 In fact, it will be conservation of the best sort. Those who can cut back on consumption at the lowest cost of themselves will do so first, and not those who are committed with mean, great hardship. 202 00:23:54.680 --> 00:24:02.840 So can we answer the Evangelical Environmental Network's question, what would Jesus drive? 203 00:24:02.840 --> 00:24:07.000 Knowing everything that the Christ system communicates about relative scarcity, would 204 00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:09.520 Jesus drive a gas-sitting economy box? 205 00:24:09.520 --> 00:24:14.640 Of course, we cannot presume to know such things, but I find it more plausible that 206 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:19.960 he would have a balanced regard for other human concerns like safety and comfort and 207 00:24:19.960 --> 00:24:24.960 I do recall that Christ once rode a donkey, which generates many more pounds of pollutants per mile. 208 00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:33.960 By the way, Tommy Lorenzo believes that Jesus would drive a large four-wheel drive Ford pickup truck full of boxes in the back. 209 00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:42.960 It was a carpenter after all. 210 00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:51.960 I do recall that Christ once rode a donkey which generates many more pounds of pollutants per mile 211 00:24:51.960 --> 00:25:11.960 After reading these denominational statements myself for several days, they began to merge in my mind. They contained the same exhortations to a vaguely defined stewardship and the inevitable condemnation of the market. 212 00:25:11.960 --> 00:25:22.960 It's no wonder that Mises could say that Christian Socialism has taken root in the last few decades among countless followers of all Christian churches. 213 00:25:22.960 --> 00:25:27.960 Again, I would remind you that this is not exactly all Christian churches. 214 00:25:27.960 --> 00:25:33.960 The denominations I'm mentioning here are not all inclusive. 215 00:25:33.960 --> 00:25:39.960 True to form, the Lutheran statement on the environment, which I mentioned previously, 216 00:25:39.960 --> 00:25:46.960 deals with a comprehensive set of environmental issues and exhorts readers to a vaguely defying stewardship. 217 00:25:46.960 --> 00:25:51.960 It is clear that the Lutherans who drafted this document had no use for free market pricing. 218 00:25:51.960 --> 00:25:58.960 I mention the Lutheran statement because one paragraph under the heading of justice and sustainability 219 00:25:58.960 --> 00:26:04.960 Sustainability Demonstrates an important and common flaw in evangelical environmentalism. 220 00:26:04.960 --> 00:26:09.960 It reads, we recognize the obstacles to sustainability. 221 00:26:09.960 --> 00:26:21.960 Neither economic growth that ignores environmental cost nor conservation of nature that ignores human cost is sustainable. 222 00:26:21.960 --> 00:26:26.960 Both will result in injustice and eventually environmental degradation. 223 00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:34.960 We know that a healthy economy can exist only within a healthy environment, but it is difficult to promote both in our decisions. 224 00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:39.960 Well, setting environmental costs against human costs is problematic. 225 00:26:39.960 --> 00:26:46.960 How can a choice be made unless there is some common unit of measurement by which to calculate these two costs? 226 00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:54.960 Because value is subjective, so is cost, and therefore information about human costs is not directly observable. 227 00:26:54.960 --> 00:27:00.960 The only information we do have about human cost is revealed through voluntary exchange. 228 00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:10.960 In a voluntary exchange, each person reveals that the thing he acquires is ranked higher on his personal value scale than the thing he gives up. 229 00:27:10.960 --> 00:27:16.960 Without explicit divine revelations, there is no other way of carrying values. 230 00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:24.460 Environmental cost here must refer to some alteration or consumption of some environmental resource. 231 00:27:24.460 --> 00:27:29.960 Ultimately, it is impossible to separate this environmental cost from human cost. 232 00:27:29.960 --> 00:27:38.460 Environmental degradation refers to the loss of one or more of the properties of the environment that were useful to some individuals. 233 00:27:38.460 --> 00:27:42.960 That usefulness may not involve an alteration of an actual state. 234 00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:46.960 True, some may value the environment for mineral deposits or farmland. 235 00:27:46.960 --> 00:27:52.960 Others, however, value it for a scenic view or for the wildlife habitat it provides. 236 00:27:52.960 --> 00:27:57.960 Therefore, one person's degradation may not be another person's degradation. 237 00:27:57.960 --> 00:28:05.960 A farmer viewing the encroachment of indigenous plant life onto his cultivated field may regard this return to a natural state as damaging, 238 00:28:05.960 --> 00:28:11.960 while another person may find cause to celebrate the erasing of man-made stars on the earth. 239 00:28:11.960 --> 00:28:24.960 of the Earth. Environmental degradation, or cost, is not objective, but is subjectively perceived by those individuals who might use the environment in some way. 240 00:28:24.960 --> 00:28:34.960 The concept of environmental cost is nonsensical without reference to the impact on the decision-making individual. That person has individual goals. 241 00:28:34.960 --> 00:28:40.960 The event some call degradation either furthers or hinders the accomplishment of its ends. 242 00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:46.960 The inanimate environment does not seek ends and therefore cannot be said to incur costs. 243 00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:53.960 Can there be such a thing as environmental cost that is not reducible to human cost? 244 00:28:53.960 --> 00:29:00.960 The environmental cost is really a subset of human cost. We are back to the problem of comparing human valuations. 245 00:29:00.960 --> 00:29:09.960 The only feasible solution is a price system, which implies private property rights and the freedom to voluntarily exchange that property. 246 00:29:09.960 --> 00:29:17.960 You have property rights in the environment, much less pricing of the environment is anathema to our environmentalist church. 247 00:29:17.960 --> 00:29:28.960 The statement of the American Baptist churches begins with an uncritical review of the science of global warming, ozone depletion and resource exhaustion. 248 00:29:28.960 --> 00:29:40.960 The document as a whole identifies any damage to the environment as sinful in regards to use of resources for private gain as necessarily inconsistent with the common good. 249 00:29:40.960 --> 00:29:48.960 It reads, We can choose to disobey to the irresponsible, disrupt and disturb the peaceable relationship of creature and creation. 250 00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:55.960 We can choose to use nature's resources only for what we perceive as our own immediate interest. 251 00:29:55.960 --> 00:30:02.960 Such action is sin. It is a violation of the basic covenant wherein we are called to stewardship. 252 00:30:02.960 --> 00:30:10.960 We could quibble with the idea that all creation would be at peace except for the existence of this public-selfish interlocutor called man. 253 00:30:10.960 --> 00:30:15.960 When we are focusing here on the problems that confronted evangelical environmentalists, 254 00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:20.960 when they tried to get by without market pricing, the core problem is a familiar one by now. 255 00:30:20.960 --> 00:30:28.960 If using nature's resources for our own immediate interest is simple, how are we to assess the needs of others? 256 00:30:28.960 --> 00:30:33.960 The writers try to bypass this problem early in the document by using the analogy of a household. 257 00:30:33.960 --> 00:30:41.960 One of the words translated as steward in the Bible is oikonomos, meaning the manager of a household. 258 00:30:41.960 --> 00:30:48.960 One suspects that the authors find this analogy attractive because those abominable market prices 259 00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:54.960 are not normally part of a household's internal resource allocation process. 260 00:30:54.960 --> 00:31:01.960 Paul Hanging explains why this concept of household stewardship cannot carry through to the larger economy. 261 00:31:01.960 --> 00:31:10.960 He says, the problem is that we live in a complex, decentralized, highly specialized society that no one controls or can control. 262 00:31:10.960 --> 00:31:17.960 What we call our economy is not an all analysis to a household or anything else that could possibly be managed. 263 00:31:17.960 --> 00:31:32.960 In modern industrial society, characterized as it is by extensive and minute division of labor, is a social system far too complex to be managed by any oikonomos, not endowed with godlike powers. 264 00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:42.960 In a household with usually two to six individuals, it is relatively simple to estimate the needs of that small number of people without assistance of prices. 265 00:31:42.960 --> 00:31:50.960 Penalties, explicit or implicit, for failure to work for the good of the whole household, are readily available. 266 00:31:50.960 --> 00:31:55.960 Once we move beyond a handful of individuals in close association with one another, 267 00:31:55.960 --> 00:32:01.960 prices become indispensable as a way to communicate the intensity of need. 268 00:32:01.960 --> 00:32:06.960 The Baptist statement criticized using resources for our immediate interest. 269 00:32:06.960 --> 00:32:12.960 Using the Earth's resources today does not apply a lower standard of living for future generations. 270 00:32:12.960 --> 00:32:18.960 Burning cheaper fossil fuels today, instead of using cleaner and more expensive sources of energy, 271 00:32:18.960 --> 00:32:25.960 will allow greater expenditure on research, education, and permanent or semi-permanent capital. 272 00:32:25.960 --> 00:32:29.960 For example, housing or infrastructure that would be used for decades. 273 00:32:29.960 --> 00:32:35.960 Would it be better to deplete to future generations the outcomes of that research and education, 274 00:32:35.960 --> 00:32:42.960 The need for future generations are taken into account. If a commodity is expected to have a sufficiently higher price in 20 years, suppliers have an incentive to maintain that price. 275 00:33:05.960 --> 00:33:09.960 and change some quantity of that commodity to sell at that time. 276 00:33:09.960 --> 00:33:14.960 Even if the individual supplier is not expected to be alive to collect those future revenues, 277 00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:21.960 the supplier does at least have the incentive to make the firm attractive for a buyer who will be around to collect. 278 00:33:21.960 --> 00:33:28.960 The immediate interest firms have in profits, both current profits and expected future profits, 279 00:33:28.960 --> 00:33:34.960 tends to produce a result that is beneficial to both living and future generations. 280 00:33:34.960 --> 00:33:40.960 In contrast, political systems allow only the living generation to have political power. 281 00:33:40.960 --> 00:33:44.960 Politicians, after all, are not elected on the expectation of future votes. 282 00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:52.960 It would seem that political solutions would be more likely to neglect the interests of future generations than with a market system. 283 00:33:52.960 --> 00:33:55.960 Yet this is exactly the proposed solution. 284 00:33:55.960 --> 00:33:56.960 The Baptists say, 285 00:33:56.960 --> 00:34:10.960 As Christians and faithful stewards, we bear the responsibility to affirm and support programs, legislation, research and organizations that protect and restore the vulnerable and the oppressed, the earth as well as the poor. 286 00:34:10.960 --> 00:34:20.960 The authors of the Baptist statement, like many others, read into certain biblical texts a message consistent with their own status and environmentalism. 287 00:34:20.960 --> 00:34:24.960 The example is their statement on the Old Testament law of Jubilee. 288 00:34:24.960 --> 00:34:28.960 This was a law that set a particular year for the freeing of slaves, 289 00:34:28.960 --> 00:34:33.960 indentured servants, and returned land to the tribe that originally owned it. 290 00:34:33.960 --> 00:34:38.960 According to these writers, however, the Jubilee year was a year of land reform. 291 00:34:38.960 --> 00:34:43.960 It is a recognition that all land basically and ultimately belongs to God, 292 00:34:43.960 --> 00:34:47.960 and that no person or group has the right to destroy it 293 00:34:47.960 --> 00:34:54.960 or to use it unendingly for unjust personal or institutional gain. 294 00:34:54.960 --> 00:35:05.960 Suppose you didn't use it endingly for unjust personal or institutional gain. 295 00:35:05.960 --> 00:35:11.960 The message of the Jubilee year had nothing to do with the destruction of land or the use of it for personal or institutional gain. 296 00:35:11.960 --> 00:35:19.960 is not a land reform in the modern sense in which the state seizes land from its rightful owners and transfers it to those of its choosing. 297 00:35:19.960 --> 00:35:24.960 It was a restriction on the market alienability of the land, not on the use of the land. 298 00:35:24.960 --> 00:35:29.960 This is a twisting of biblical interpretation to grant power to the state. 299 00:35:29.960 --> 00:35:36.960 As the biblical scholar and economist here in North has argued, the time and place for applying that law is along the past. 300 00:35:36.960 --> 00:35:40.960 No judicial appeal to any of those laws is valid today, through rights. 301 00:35:40.960 --> 00:35:47.960 Those who appeal to them risk placing us in bondage to a Bible of permanent chattel slavery 302 00:35:47.960 --> 00:35:51.960 or the imposition of permanent slavery to the messianic welfare state. 303 00:35:51.960 --> 00:36:00.960 For many evangelical environmentalists, however, their interpretation of the Bible is apparently based on their personal brand of statism. 304 00:36:00.960 --> 00:36:04.960 Protestants are not the only ones having problems with the concept of stewardship. 305 00:36:04.960 --> 00:36:15.960 One key Roman Catholic statement acknowledges that allocating resources for their most appropriate uses is not easy, but it goes even further in suggesting ways to solve the problem. 306 00:36:15.960 --> 00:36:28.960 Stewardship implies, they say, that we must both care for creation according to standards that are not of our own making, and at the same time be resourceful in finding ways to make the earth flourish. 307 00:36:28.960 --> 00:36:38.960 It says, even as we rejoice in Earth's goodness and the beauty of nature, stewardship places the responsibility for the well-being of all of God's creatures. 308 00:36:38.960 --> 00:36:48.960 In the ecological crisis, a common responsibility, quote John Paul II, promotes world government as a way to exercise stewardship over the environment. 309 00:36:48.960 --> 00:37:00.960 He says, the concepts of an ordered universe and a common heritage both point to the necessity of a more internationally coordinated approach to the management of the Earth's goods. 310 00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:16.960 Later, in Centesimus Annus, the same Pope contends, it is the task of the state to provide for the defense and preservation of common goods, such as the natural and human environments, which cannot be safeguarded simply by market forces. 311 00:37:16.960 --> 00:37:40.960 What is it about the nature of goods that precludes their market alienability, or what is the logic of the distinction between goods that promote goods that satisfy collective needs and goods that satisfy individual needs? 312 00:37:40.960 --> 00:37:50.960 Certainly, Christian thought regards certain goods or services as properly marked inalienable, such as children or murder. 313 00:37:50.960 --> 00:37:54.960 This distinction is never made clear in St. Thessalonians. 314 00:37:54.960 --> 00:38:03.960 But an appeal to the nature of the good or service, as is done, is not likely to produce consistent understanding among Christians. 315 00:38:03.960 --> 00:38:09.960 While we consider rivers, oceans, scenic wilderness and even air quality as marketable goods, 316 00:38:09.960 --> 00:38:30.960 In the writings of modern evangelical environmentalists runs a disturbing theme. The idea that it is possible for a small group of individuals to improve upon our use of the environment through coercion. 317 00:38:30.960 --> 00:38:35.960 In the name of stewardship they lay claim to control of every aspect of our lives. 318 00:38:35.960 --> 00:38:42.960 Private property, a protected institution throughout the Bible, is regarded as dispensable. 319 00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:47.960 Of course, evangelical environmentalists deny that destroying private property is part of their plan. 320 00:38:47.960 --> 00:38:53.960 Mises wrote about these types decades ago to avoid drawing the logical conclusions of their premises. 321 00:38:53.960 --> 00:39:00.960 He said, they give one to understand that they are combating only the excrescences and abuses of the capitalist order. 322 00:39:00.960 --> 00:39:10.960 were a protest that they have not the slightest desire to abolish private property and they continue to constantly emphasize their opposition to Marxist socialism. 323 00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:17.960 They constantly proclaim that they do not wish to attack private property, but what they would retain is only the name of private property. 324 00:39:17.960 --> 00:39:26.960 If the control of private property is transferred to the state, the property owner is only an official, a deputy of the economic administration. 325 00:39:26.960 --> 00:39:37.960 Almost completely neglected by the Evangelical Environmentalist is the recognition of the dangers to human life and freedom of handing over such powers to the state. 326 00:39:37.960 --> 00:39:42.960 The Bible contains multiple examples of the misuse of state power. 327 00:39:42.960 --> 00:39:52.960 To trust the state, to put our interests first, and to sacrifice our liberties for the empowerment of bureaucracies is to deify and idolize the state. 328 00:39:52.960 --> 00:40:01.960 Evangelical environmentalists are seeking salvation in the very institution that has been responsible for slaughtering catalyst members of Christians. 329 00:40:01.960 --> 00:40:06.960 Turning over regulatory power to the state is a fatal mistake. 330 00:40:06.960 --> 00:40:21.960 Another evangelical environmentalist of a very different sort, named Calvin Weisner, has contended that environmentalist central planning contradicts another Christian moral standard, that is to avoid pride. 331 00:40:21.960 --> 00:40:31.460 To claim that a bureaucrat or a committee of bureaucrats can have sufficient knowledge to plan an economy is to lay claim to one of the attributes of God, omniscience. 332 00:40:31.460 --> 00:40:32.960 Bison wrote, 333 00:40:32.960 --> 00:40:42.460 Humility applied to environmental stewardship should lead us, in the light of the vast complexity of human society and the Earth's ecosystems, 334 00:40:42.460 --> 00:40:51.460 to hesitate considerably at the notion that we know enough about them to manage them, as opposed to enforcing the rules of justice. 335 00:40:51.460 --> 00:41:01.460 particularly that we are confident enough of our knowledge to assert our management preferences in place of the free choices of those who disagree with us. 336 00:41:01.460 --> 00:41:10.460 Mises' observations on the impossibility of socialist calculation should leave the environmentalists for humility. 337 00:41:10.460 --> 00:41:19.460 Market prices represent, in summary form, billions of inexpressible assessments of the value of the different parts of creation 338 00:41:19.460 --> 00:41:26.460 In a complex world, caring for creation is impossible without them. Thank you.