ENVIRONMENT:
Restitution is the best deterrent against one entity taking advantage of another. However, the biggest polluter, the federal government is immune from such recourse. Once again these statistics show that government intervention is rarely the solution.
1) According to an investigative report in The Boston Globe, "government is the biggest polluter in the land"... and estimated clean up costs could pass $300 billion, more than five times the cost of environmental harm done by all private businesses combined. For example:
* The EPA's laboratories in Lexington, Massachusetts were leaking mercury into ground water.
* In Yellowstone Natl. Park, "tens of thousands of gallons of raw sewage" have been dumped into pristine lakes and streams by the Park Service.
* The cost to taxpayers of cleaning up the government's 61,550 toxic sites is estimated at $300 billion -- compared to only $57 billion to clean all the pollution caused by chemical and oil companies.
2) Number of Americans killed annually due to Corporate Average Fuel Economy laws passed by Congress which forced automakers to build smaller, lighter cars: 3,900. The Washington Times, 1993.
3) Because it can cost property owners complete use of their land if it gets listed as home to a list species, The Endangered Species Act has created perverse incentives among landowners to:
* Destroy habitat attractive to listed species before they can migrate there.
* Destroy habitat of species that have been proposed for listing.
* Kill members of listed species before federal authorities can find them and declare the property critical habitat.
* As costs of the ESA grow, landowners are coming to view wildlife as a threat.
4) $9.3 million was spent to make a dump safe for "children to eat small amounts of dirt" for 245, rather than 75, days a year. However, "there were no dirt eating children in the area. It was a swamp," according to New Hampshire Judge Stephen Breyer after a toxic waste case that lasted more than ten years and 40,000 pages of documentation.
5) "We can expect more than a dozen deaths from ingested toothpicks--a death toll more than twice what the EPA predicts from asbestos pipe, shingles and roof coatings." Judge Stephen Breyer, Insight 7/5/93.
6) Ocie & Carey Mils served two years in jail and paid $10,000 in fines for filling a dry ditch on their land with sand because the Army Corp of Engineers ruled the ditch was "wetlands". When asked their definition of "wetlands"..according to Army Corp Official, Robert J. Pierce, "Whatever we decide it is." Cato Institute.
7) Humans are responsible for adding about 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually to the atmosphere ... the contribution from Nature is 200 billion tons annually according to Dixy Lee Ray, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission under President Carter.