Nature Unbound

Overview

What if what we think we know about ecology and environmental policy is just wrong? What if environmental laws often make things worse? What if the very idea of nature has been hijacked by politics? What if wilderness is something we create in our minds, as opposed to being an actual description of nature? Developing answers to these questions and developing implications of those answers are our purposes in this book. Two themes guide us—political ecology and political entrepreneurship. Combining these two concepts, which we develop in some detail, leads us to recognize that sometimes in their original design and certainly in their implementation, major U.S. environmental laws are more about opportunism and ideology than good management and environmental improvement. Will America enact environmental policies based on sound principles? The authors of Nature Unbound are cautiously optimistic.

Reviews

"Read this book and learn the diverse ways in which organized interest groups, and prominent individuals, have sought to impose their idealizations of nature as ecological equilibrium on the rest of us. There is no such thing as nature undisturbed, and bureaucratic bad management is often the unintended consequence of our limited knowledge of ecosystem complexity. Improvement, if attainable, must be more marginal, more decentralized, and focused on learning because no one can know final right answers." —Vernon L. Smith, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences; George L. Argyros Endowed Chair in Finance and Economics and Professor of Economics and Law, Chapman University "In the well written and highly informative book, Nature Unbound, Simmons, Yonk, and Sim develop the twin concepts of political ecology—the idea that in Washington science is politics—and political entrepreneurship—the notion that every significant political action provides an opportunity for special interest groups to steer the action in their direction. They apply the concepts as they scan the last 40 years of the U.S. environmental saga, stopping occasionally to do in-depth analyses of intentions and outcomes. Theirs is not a normative anti-environment cry for deregulation, but rather a carefully reasoned and documented effort to explain how environmental actions based on faulty but popularized notions of science lead inevitably to botched outcomes that fail to redress true environmental concerns. Nature Unbound should be read, studied and debated by all who take the environment seriously." —Bruce Yandle, Dean Emeritus, College of Business and Behavioral Science, Clemson University; Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics, Mercatus Center, George Mason University "Nature Unbound provides a fascinating look at bureaucracy and environment in the context of a new view of ecology. The new ecology rejects the ideologically based concept of a 'balance of nature' and recognizes variability is fundamental in ecological systems whether or not humans are involved. The book examines the role of politics and entrepreneurship in environmental policy, in the context of the new ecology, and provides an absorbing narration of natural resource legislation, legal activities and court decisions as well as management policies. The book concludes with five principles for redesigning and incentivizing institutions to be applied to specific individual resource and environmental programs." —Roger A. Sedjo, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future "In striving to improve our environmental stewardship, it is important to take off our rose-colored glasses and contemplate the imperfections in our system. In Nature Unbound, Simmons, Yonk, and Sim focus on identifying and explaining deficiencies in long-standing environmental laws. Some readers may find the analysis uncomfortable because it challenges so many deeply ingrained perspectives. Whatever one's view of the authors' criticisms, this book is thought-provoking; it forces us to re-examine the basic incentives and motivations underlying our environmental policies." —Gale A. Norton, former Secretary, U.S. Department of the Interior "Nature Unbound is a most timely and important book. We are currently in the grip of a revived regulatory utopianism whereby various 'market failures' will be eliminated by diligent, well-informed regulators who have only our best interests at heart. This belief system has recently transformed government policy toward financial services, healthcare—and the environment, which is the subject of this book. In a lively tour through the history of environmental regulation, the authors show how all the elements of the reigning belief are wrong. They tell us how the regulators face information distorted by the interests of the adversaries before them, then how they use the information to pursue personal and bureaucratic interests that ultimately have little to do with improving the environment. I would recommend

Author Biography

Kenneth J. Sim is currently employed as an analyst with STRATA, an energy and environment think-tank.Randy T Simmons is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute of Political Economy at Utah State University's Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, and former Mayor of Providence, Utah. Professor Simmons's books include the award-winning Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure, Aquanomics: Water Markets and the Environment and The Political Economy of Culture and Norms: Informal Solutions to the Commons Problem.Ryan M. Yonk is Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, Research Director for the Center for Public Lands and Rural Economics in the Department of Economics at Utah State University, and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Southern Utah University.