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New Book Challenges Conventional View of Environmentalism; 'You Have to Admit It's Getting Better,' Edited by Hoover Fellow Terry L. Anderson
STANFORD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 3, 2004--In the new book "You Have to Admit It's Getting Better: From Economic Prosperity to Environmental Quality," (Hoover Institution Press, 2004), the authors dispute what the editor Terry L. Anderson, Hoover senior fellow, identifies as the Malthusian prediction that "exponential growth and consumption will ultimately run up against resource limits."
In what many will consider controversial, the authors dispense with the idea of conserving finite resources as the means to sustain the environment. Instead they look to legal institutions as the means to bring about changes in the market that will bring about changes for the better in the environment. As Anderson sums it up, "Economic growth is not the antithesis of environmental quality: rather, the two go hand in hand -- if the incentives are right."
In the opening chapter, Bjorn Lomborg reviews the findings of his 2001 book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (Cambridge University Press) in which he identified and debunked environmental myths. In his research, Lomborg finds positive correlations between economic growth and environmental quality. In the following chapters, the contributors discuss how economic performance, globalization, and other factors associated with growth improve environmental quality rather than destroy it.
Contributors to the book include Madhusudan Bhattarai, International Water Management Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka; B. Delworth Gardner, Brigham Young University; Indur M. Goklany, formerly with National Commission on Air Quality; Lomborg, Institut for Miljovurdering/Environmental Assessment Institute; Robert E. McCormick, Clemson University; Seth W. Norton, Wheaton College; Maya Vijayaraghavan, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Bruce Yandle, Clemson University.
Anderson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the executive director of the Property and Environment Research Center - the Center for Free Market Environmentalism, a think tank focusing on market solutions to environmental problems located in Bozeman, Mont. His work has helped launch the idea of free market environmentalism and has prompted public debate over the balance between markets and government in managing natural resources.
"You Have to Admit It's Getting Better: From Economic Prosperity to Environmental Quality" Edited by Terry L. Anderson ISBN: 0-8179-4482-6 $15.00 paperback 212 pages May 2004
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