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ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism'On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - website - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root. In a story written just before Anderson's northern California appearance, Truckee Today's Karen Sloan described PERC as an organization that "contends that private property rights encourage good stewardship of natural resources." The story, headlined "'Enviroprenuer' scholar to speak at Resort at Squaw Creek," pointed out that "PERC scholars argue that government subsidies often degrade the environment, that market incentives can spur individuals to conserve and protect the environment and that polluters should be liable for the harm they cause others." On its website, PERC -- a non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1980 -- calls itself "the nation's oldest and largest institute dedicated to original research that brings market principles to resolving environmental problems." PERC maintains that it "pioneered the approach known as free market environmentalism," based on the following principles:
PERC's basic construct, that the free market can do a better job protecting the environment than the government, is an idea that was once considered ridiculous by environmentalists when it first surfaced several decades ago. Now, according to Truckee Today's Sloan, it is being "embraced by many environmental groups." On March 12, PERC announced that it had been named a winner of a 2007 Templeton Freedom Awards, a competition managed by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (website). The awards program "recognizes innovative civil society programs sponsored by independent research institutes around the world," PERC's website pointed out. The program is named for investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton. "Economic and political freedom are advancing globally, and men and women focused on ideas, rather than violence, are leading the way," said Atlas President Alejandro Chafuen. "The winners of this year's Templeton Awards demonstrate the breadth of this movement." According to the Atlas website, "Templeton Freedom Prizes for Excellence in Promoting Liberty are awarded in four categories: Free Market Solutions to Poverty, Social Entrepreneurship, Ethics & Values, and Student Outreach. Winning institutes in each category receive $10,000, while the runners up receive $5,000 each." PERC's award came in the Social Entrepreneurship category where it won the top prize for "its two-week Enviropreneur Camp for environmental entrepreneurs, or 'enviropreneurs.' The Camp encourages participants to discover how individual initiative, property rights, and the free market can be used to solve environmental problems." The only other U.S.-based think tank to win one of the awards was Father Robert Sirico's Michigan-based Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty (website) which won first place in the Free Market Solutions to Poverty category. Acton's Connecting Good Intentions to Sound Economics Advertising Campaign, "used the power of the popular media to challenge common beliefs about how to alleviate poverty. Using the tagline, 'Don't Just Care, Think!,' the project used documentaries, short films, public service announcements, print ads, and other educational materials to make the case that good intentions alone will not help the world's poor." "Free-Market Environmentalism"According to materials published by PERC, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is "an excellent example of how free market environmentalism works." "Free-Market Environmentalism, as originally espoused by Anderson, and former Secretary of Interior Gale Norton (a former Senior PERC Fellow), has been embraced by a growing number of environmental groups -- and not just by traditionally market-oriented ones such as The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense (ED)," Scott Silver, the Executive Director of Wild Wilderness, the Bend, Oregon-based grassroots environmental group, told Media Transparency. (TNC is the world's largest land trust with a million members and supporters which has protected 117 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide. Its primary mission is to protect the highest value expressions of biodiversity.) "Some would rationalize this by saying that with politics in the country having moved so far to the right during the past two decades, there simply was no alternative other than to embrace the shifting paradigm and go with the flow," said Silver. "A great many conservation organizations moved right during this period and championed, to one degree or another, the ideology of Anderson, Norton, TNC and ED. However," Silver pointed out, "some moved right selectively, doing so only when it appeared to be advantageous. Few organizations stood their ground or remanded true to their principles. A lot of ground was lost and the world suffered for it." 'Enviropreneurs'PERC's website contains a number of examples of successful free-market environmental efforts. Robert Keith and Carl Palmer, who formed a company called Beartooth Capital Partners, which invests in ecologically valuable ranches in the West and earns returns for investors by buying up degraded land and then enhancing it, protecting it or, in some cases, adding limited development for a net gain for the environment and for the economy. Keith and Palmer -- influenced by the teachings of Anderson the Leal -- are called "enviroprenuers" in PERC vernacular. Another example cited by Anderson is the partnership between Pamela Baker of Environmental Defense and Donald Leal, who are dealing with the problem of over-fishing. Baker and Leal advocate using a property rights approach (in this case individual fishing quotas) to ocean fisheries. "The essence of enviropreneurship is disrupting the status quo with new ideas," Anderson wrote in an article posted on the PERC website. "Joseph Schumpeter, one of the 20th century's most influential economists, argued that entrepreneurs bring the winds of 'creative destruction' -- replacing old ways of doing things with new, more effective ways. By bringing these winds to the environmental sector, enviropreneurs will replace the political activist ways of old with market solutions of the future." Anderson and his PERC cohorts have been hacking away at the "enviropreneur" terrain for better than two decades. Back in 1987, according to the Christian Science Monitor's Timothy Aeppel, "advocates" were then calling it ''new resource economics," which Aeppel described as "an unusual blend of environmentalism and free-market philosophy." Aeppel pointed out that "although clearly outside the mainstream, the ideas are winning at least partial approval from some policymakers and analysts." FundingPERC reports that "it rel[ies] entirely on contributions from foundations, corporations and private individuals. Currently, 92 percent of our funding comes from foundations, 7 percent from individuals and miscellaneous sources and 1 percent from corporations." An Exxon Secrets Factsheet pointed out that between 1998 and 2006 the ExxonMobil Foundation gave PERC $115,000. Between 1985 and 2005, according to Media Transparency's research, PERC received more than $5 million in grants from conservative foundations. Amongst the most consistent donors are the Roe Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation (Coors), and the Armstrong Foundation. PERC is given a two-star rating by Charity Navigator -- "Your Guide to Intelligent Giving" -- and the website reports that FYE 12/2005 showed that Terry Anderson received $184,000, or nearly 10% of the organization's expenses. The futureNow that the Democrats control Congress, will there be a reversal of some of the draconian environmental proposals espoused by the Bush Administration? Will the influence of groups like PERC decline? Not according to Scott Silver. In a Wild Wilderness email alert he maintained that despite the fact that Democrats control Congress, he expected that "the shift toward free-marketism" will continue to move forward. "I expect conservation organizations and the new Democratic leadership to work together to promote a growing assortment of market-based environmental initiatives," Silver maintained. "Whatever 'watch-dog' or 'sea-anchor' function the conservation community served will further erode. Market solutions will dominate and most especially in connection with the biggest issues of our day, issues such as 'climate change' and 'peak oil.'" "Furthermore," said Silver, "I believe that the ideology which a few years ago was considered 'blasphemous' by environmentalists, will come to dominate the environmental movement -- a movement that will, through its actions, help speed the transformation of America into a fully corporate-dominated neo-feudal state." Nearly nine years ago, Silver and Don Leal, Anderson's mate at PERC, squared off at the University of Colorado School of Law Natural Resources Law Center's annual summer conference titled "Outdoor Recreation: Promise and Peril in the New West". "On June 9th, Leal and I shared the stage and went toe to toe," Silver said. "Leal's presentation was titled 'Market Solutions to Public Recreation Finance: Creating User Supported Parks,' while mine was titled 'The Limitations of a Market-Based Outdoor Recreation Policy: Reasons for Caution.' "For the past decade, with respect to the issue of National Park and Outdoor Recreation funding, the contrasting positions of PERC and Wild Wilderness have largely defined the national debate. PERC speaks for the market. Wild Wilderness speaks for the Public Trust, the American Commons and the American People." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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