RJ Smith, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, tells Canadian law-makers about the US experience with endangered species legislation: "From a public policy perspective, the US Endangered Species Act has been a failure — a complete and unmitigated disaster. If one had deliberately set out to create a law that would have harmed wildlife, destroyed habitat, and discouraged private landowners from protecting wildlife on their own lands, it would have been difficult to surpass the US Endangered Species Act. The ESA is causing tremendous harm to many of the very species it was designed to protect."
Category Archives: Speeches
Saving Canada’s fisheries: Why we should move from government regulation to systems of self-managed ownership
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A speech prepared for Property Rights, Economics & Environment: Marine Resources, an international conference organised by the Centre d’Analyse Economique and The International Centre for Research on Environmental Issues. The conference took place in Aix-en-Provence, France, on June 21-23, 2000.
The Public Good: Which Public? Whose Good?
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In this presentation to a Student Seminar on Public Policy Issues, held in Toronto, Ontario, in November 1997, Elizabeth Brubaker argues that remote, centralized governments, driven by political considerations and insensitive to local circumstances, are not the best guardians of the public good. Environmental problems require a diversity of solutions devised by those most affected. Good information and strong property rights give people both tools and incentives to use their resources sustainably.
Property Rights: Creating Incentives and Tools for Sustainable Fisheries Management
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The keynote address to the Tri-State Rock Lobster Industry Conference, held in Adelaide, Australia, on September 8, 1997. In it, Elizabeth Brubaker argues that governments should put control over fisheries into the hands of fishers. She examines the political pressures and bureaucratic structures that deprive government managers of the incentives and tools necessary to make sustainable decisions. She calls for systems of self-managed ownership that remove decisions about catches and habitat from the political arena.
Beyond Quotas: Private Property Solutions to Overfishing and Habitat Degradation
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Presentation to Managing a Wasting Resource: Would Quotas Solve the Problems Facing the West Coast Salmon Fishery?, a conference held in Vancouver, BC, in May 1996.
Without Obstruction, Diversion or Corruption: The Power of Property Rights to Preserve Our Lakes and Rivers
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A presentation to the Fraser Institute Student Seminar on Public Policy Issues, in Toronto, Ontario, on November 4, 1995.
Nature’s Case for Restoring Strong Property Rights
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In this presentation to a Student Seminar on Public Policy Issues in 1994, Elizabeth Brubaker describes the ways in which individuals and businesses use property rights to protect the environment and how, when governments take away property rights, the environment suffers.
