TT's Lost in Tokyo — by TokyoTom

Robert L. Bradley, Jr. is an energy expert (author, former speechwriter for Key Lay and director of public policy analysis at Enron, founder and CEO of Institute for Energy Research) with libertarian leanings. 

But in a series of posts on climate issues on the recently launched  “free market” energy group blog MasterResource that he spearheads, Rob doesn’t come off as much of a libertarian, free-market guy as he suggests, since he doesn’t so much advocate for free market approaches to such issues as he takes evident pleasure in mocking enviros (and the preferences they share with many others) – all while ignoring that the status quo isn’t free of rent-seekers (precisely as Roderick Long and Ed Dolan have criticized libertarians).

1.  Take, for example, his January 25 post, Why Do the Alarmists Feel Bad About Debates–and Debating?.  In this post, Rob examines an online debate between scientist Joe Romm of Climate Progress and Jerry Taylor of Cato, notes that Joe later seems to acknowledge that Jerry did better in the debate, but skips over some of Joe’s chief criticisms of “skeptic” opponents by concluding:

Mr. Romm has all but conceded that the skeptics of climate alarmism beat the alarmists in debate, posting about it here and here. He blames it on the dishonesty of the “deniers,” but in fact they might have a much stronger intellectual and practical case. And I dare say that Romm does not feel he did particularly well against Taylor in their online debate and is not itching to debate him again, particularly in person.

But if I am wrong, I say: let’s get a big audience for it. Make the stakes high. Sell tickets. Poll the audience. It will be that entertaining!

Here was my comment to Rob:

Well Rob, Joe Romm isn’t ALL alarmists, but I’d say it’s rather clear that he’s saying that “scientists” are not good policy debaters – as it’s something that they’re not trained in. I suppose you would hardly disagree.

On top of that, Joe Romm and others simply are not trained in public choice or Austrian perspectives on political economy issues, so he clearly doesn’t understand what Jerry patiently tries to explain. But there’s rather alot of that to go around – across the political spectrum and on many, many issues – and I rather fail to understand how mocking that who lack understanding is a good way to open their minds to how wealth creation occurs and to the perils of using the state.

In addition, Jerry Taylor is clearly different from – more open and intellectually honest – most of the other debaters Joe Romm refers to.

2.  In another thread, Rob suggested that “doing nothing” was the preferred policy approach to climate; thankfully, in response to a comment from me, Rob expressly noted that

a free-market approach is not about “do nothing” but implementing a whole new energy approach to remove myriad regulation and subsidies that have built up over a century or more.

Great!  Inquiring minds are waiting to hear about what it is that Rob Bradley and others at “MasterResource” actually recommend as an approach to climate concerns!

Meanwhile, can we stop pretending that “enviros” are the only ones fighting over the wheel of government, much less that they can hold a candle to wealthy corporate insiders?

Jerry Taylor of Cato is one careful observer of the carbon follies who sees the handwriting on the wall for some type of carbon pricing system coming from the Congress during the Obama Administration.  Strikingly, in an interesting post up at MasterResource (a new self-styled “free market” energy blog spearheaded by former Enron speechwriter Robert Bradley), Jerry is cheering on environmental hard-liners!

It’s worth a gander to understand why.

Jerry’s post borrows the “Bootleggers and Baptists” lingo of Bruce Yandle to comment on the dynamics by which both  Baptists/moralists (in this case, the enviros) and the bootleggers/rent-seekers (in this case, the firms trying to reap benefits from government prohibitions) are seeking to come to terms on new carbon-related government policies.  Jerry  first explains and warns that the core of the mandatory cap-and-trade program proposed by the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP a coalition of big business and environmental groups) includes “a replay of the old-source/new-source standards incorporated in the Clean Air Act (CAA), which likewise established tough emissions standards for future power plants but much lighter rules for plants currently in operation”.

Because his concern over this replay of a costly aspect of the CAA, Jerry cheers on the criticism of this plan coming from other parts of the environmental community, in particular from Joe Romm, a former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy who comments frequently on climate change policy issues at the ClimateProgress.org blog of the Center for American Progress.  Says Jerry:

Why should a libertarian skeptic about the dangers of climate change applaud environmental absolutism in this case? Several reasons.

First, the bifurcated old-source/new-source regulation makes no economic sense whatsoever. It distorts the power market by artificially advantaging older plants relative to newer plants. It spawns a huge legislative/legal-industry to fight over old-source/new-source distinctions until the end of time, creating substantial deadweight losses. It creates huge, unearned windfalls for politically clever corporations and thus encourages future market-rigging mischief. It would be far, far better to settle on one standard and apply it across the board to old sources and new sources alike.

Second, without corporate support, … that bill would likely be rendered economically toothless, with loopholes and timetables delaying serious emissions reductions until some time relatively far into the future. I am unaware of any significant environmental initiative that was successfully signed into law that didn’t manage to scare-up significant, widespread corporate support.

Third, there is a virtue in political honesty. If politicians want to argue for laws that will seriously reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, then let’s have an honest discussion about the costs and benefits of those proposed laws. Symbolically potent gestures that are more empty than real feeds the public belief in free lunches. While one could argue that it’s better to get an empty gesture than a real one, when the latter has far more costs than the former, I can’t believe that any good will come from a culture of political dishonesty and voter illusion.

(emphasis added)

Well, I agree that casting a light on potential political deals may be a valuable way to influence the outcome in ways that improve policy, but it may very well be that voter “dis-illusion” with political dishonesty is just what the doctor ordered, in getting voters to demand both greater honesty and less government in general.

I appreciate that guys like Jerry Taylor are trying to point out how members of USCAP are trying to lock in advantages for themselves over competitors and new entrants, but why isn’t there now (and why wasn’t there during the Bush administration) any concerted focus by libertarians on less-costly and market-friendly alternatives that still address enviros concerns, like public utility deregulation and allowing immediate depreciation of investments in energy inffrastructure, prizes for carbon-capture and fusion technologies, and making sure that information about climate change (and corporate performance on various yardsticks) is widely disseminated? 

As I have previously noted,  Iain Murray of CEI, Bruce Yandle of Clemson and PERC, Gene Callahan and Jonathan Adler at Case Western have all made suggestions in this regard – to deafening silence from libertarians in general.  At Mises, scorn of enviros and of their preferences with respect to open-access commons seems to be the order of the day.  Let’s wave the white flag, shall we?

In a recent post, Andy Revkin, a New York Times reporter who blogs on energy and environmental issues at his “Dot Earth” blog, asks “When whale species, like the minke, are no longer rare, can they be both admired and eaten — as North Americans do with bison — or is it simply wrong to kill whales at all?”

In a comment in response, I noted that as whales are unowned, the problem of how to manage whale stocks shares much in common with the problem of ocean fisheries – viz., open access tragedies of the commons, and politicized management – further noted that the main US environmental groups have very clearly recognized, somewhat surprisingly, that implementing property rights systems is vital to ensuring the long-term protection of fisheries.

Mainline enviros pushing for property rights?  Has the world gone crazy?

I copy below my comment, which quotes the key fisheries statement by the enviro coalition (emphasis added):

Andy, of course the real problem with whales, bluefin tuna and most other ocean resources is that no one owns them, so catching them for one dinner plate or another is frequently a classic tragedy of the commons or, if governments regulate catch, a race to catch within season all while trying to make sure limits are not set too low.

This is the reason why whaling stocks crashed and whalers agreed to a moratorium. The fact that whales remain unowned but further takings are decided by a committee of nations is what ties the dispute to a political process – a process that frankly serves no one’s long-term interest and is a distraction from the more important problems of protecting crashing ocean fisheries in general.

The clear way forward is in establishing rights to the particular stock of whales or fish, so that those who value the resource can invest in protecting it. This holds true just as much for whales as for fish.

This is what the organization Defying Ocean’s End (cofounded by Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Ocean Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, The World Conservation Union, and World Wildlife Fund) has to say about protecting fish:

http://www.defyingoceansend.org…

“Overfishing, high bycatch rates, the use of gear types that damage habitat (like trawls and dredges), and the large subsidies supporting fisheries (totally over $15 billion per year) are all symptoms of an underlying problem. In most fisheries that are exhibiting declines in landings and revenues, overfishing, bycatch, and habitat damage, actions that result in the symptoms are actually rational given the way the fisheries are managed. In these fisheries, secure privileges to catch certain amounts of fish are not specified, so naturally individual fishermen compete to maximize their individual shares of the catch. No incentives for conservation exist in this situation, because every fish conserved can be caught by another fisherman. The competition to maximize catch often results in a fishery “arms race”, resulting in the purchase of multiple vessels, the use of powerful engines and large vessels, and the use of highly efficient gear like trawls. Capital costs for vessels and gear increase as a result. At the same time, the competition to maximize catch often results in supply gluts, as most fishermen land large catches at the same time during seasons that become shorter and shorter due to the excessive number of vessels participating in the fishery. Prices paid to fishermen are reduced by the glut, and the quality of fish supplied to consumers declines as well (from fresh to frozen). The non-market costs associated with this kind of behavior — such as habitat damage, overfishing, and bycatch — are passed on to the fishery and onto society as a whole.

“Most of the solutions that have been implemented or proposed to fix the world’s fisheries center on command-and-control measures: regulators or courts telling fishermen how to fish through the imposition of controls on effort (e.g., fishing vessel length, engine horsepower, gear restrictions, etc.). Prescriptions like these work against strong economic incentives for maximizing catch, which are not addressed by such measures, and are of course usually resisted by fishermen. Often, prescriptions create incentives for “work-arounds” and set up a cat-and-mouse game between fishermen and regulators – for example, if regulators impose a restriction on vessel size, fishermen may purchase two vessels to maintain high catch levels.

“As in most natural resource problems, more effective solutions will address the fundamental drivers of unsustainable fisheries. In this case, the key necessary reform will be to designate secure catch privileges. It is important to understand that such privileges can be allocated to different kinds of entities in different ways, and indeed, they should be tailored to specific fisheries and communities to fit with local customs, traditions, values, and social structure.”

FWIW, I’ve blogged on whales and fishing any number of times:
http://mises.org…
http://mises.org…

The problem of crashing fisheries is a far greater one than what to do about whales, so it is a real shame that the environmental community, Japan (which consumes much of the world’s fish) and other nations cannot see fit to bury the hatchet – at least on whale populations that are growing (perhaps by applying a property rights regime that would allocate ownership rights not only to whaling fleets but to conservation groups) – and work together on setting up sustainable, property-rights based harvesting regimes on imperilled ocean fisheries.

In an earth-shaking 😉 essay in today’s Human Events, CEI‘s Chris Horner comes clean and acknowledges that climate denialists and alarmists are peas in the same rent-seeking pod. 

We have encountered Horner,  former lawyer and now full-time scourge of envirofascists on behalf of the firms that fund the Competitive Enterprise Institute (and author of “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed), a number of times here previously.  I consider Chris to be very knowledgeable and insightful, but it seems to me that his passion paints him into a corner as a spokesman for one side of the commercial interests seeking to influence policy, hinders a broader self-awareness, and leaves him with little ability to reach out to persuade others.

Says Horner:

Further, the premise behind most alarmist slurs, of the “tobacco scientist” variety and the ritual claims of “ties” to “big oil” or “industry,” is that a scientist’s convictions and those of other dissenters are for sale. Yet it is illogical to assume that dissenters can be bought but alarmists cannot. Looking at the balance sheets on both sides, their logic would conclude that the greatest amount of corruption occurs on the alarmist side.

With federal expenditures on climate-related research soaring above $5 billion annually – more than we spend on AIDS or the National Cancer Institute – and hundreds of billions in “rents” to corporations pushing these schemes should the alarmist campaign succeed, the potentially corrupting factor of money cannot be ignored.

Someone saw a good investment in giving Al Gore $300 million for his “climate crisis” re-branding campaign. Gore’s advisor (and, officially, NASA astronomer) James Hansen and other activists receive enormous sums of money underwriting their alarmist activities, sums that no “skeptic” has ever been accused of receiving. Meanwhile Gore—the king of claiming that those who disagree are merely in it for the money—makes millions annually from all manner of enterprises premised upon the climate crisis, and his lucre will increase several fold upon passing the laws his alarmism demands.

The difficult truth is that the alarmists cannot logically fault the skeptics’ credibility without also faulting Gore’s credibility, and that of their heavily compensated alarmist mouthpieces. Yet no “skeptic” receives as much as Gore or even Hansen from shouting falsities about the issue.

The delicious irony found in the global warming alarmists’ claims is that it is they who closely resemble the “tobacco scientists” they accuse those who oppose them of being, and are quite plainly the ones stuck on “denial”.

Several thoughts occur to me:

First, most of Horner’s points are perfectly fair, but it’s interesting that he can make them while ignoring what they imply about himself and others who are denialists (since Horner calls those concerned about the effects of releasing all of the fossil carbons “alarmists”, for the sake of balance, let’s call him and others “denialists”, as opposed to “dissenters” or “skeptics”).

Second, Horner fails to distinguish between amounts spent by governments and amounts spent by rent-seekers directly.  While large government expenditures are “potentially corrupting”, such expenditures clearly do NOT directly corrupt the results of scientific investigations, nor do they directly influence decision-making by government, politicians or others.  As a result, such expenditures are certainly in a different class than direct and indirect rent-seeking (via paid mouthpieces, contributions to think tanks, campaign contributions, junkets and the like) by special interests.

Third, while Horner is right to note that there are large amounts flowing to support rent-seeking via alarmist mouthpieces like Gore, there is nothing really new here – this is just plain old garden-variety rent-seeking of the same type that we have seen from the denialists (fossil fuel interests and others who have different preferences regarding rights to the atmosphere and science/defense-budget priorities).  In one sense this is a relief – as it clarifies that the chief financiers of the alarmism are not out to destroy capitalism – but  one is left wondering WHO, precisely, is doing the funding and what precisely are their objectives.  While some may be looking for favors from government, others may be sincerely concerned about the potential consequences of releasing all of the fossil carbon stored up since the Age of Dinosaurs and the lack of any market mechanisms to express their preferences.

Fourth, while more information on rent-seekers is needed, it’s clear that most of them are commercial interests, whom our laws say are legal persons and our courts have declared to have the same Constitutional rights to spend freely to influence government via “free speech” as do you or I.  While a discussion of the merits of legal personhood is beyond the scope of of this post, I wish to draw attention to the role of limited liability, in fuelling the growth of (i) the corporate form, (ii) rent-seeking (at all branches of government) by corporations, and (iii) public pressure by citizens’ groups (and faux-citizens’ groups) to fight over the wheel of government.

Finally, Horner oversteps when he argues that the alarmists’ views must be based on a premise that “scientist’s convictions and those of other dissenters are for sale”. I think a little more nuance is called for.  We are cognitively wired as tribal animals.  That means we are inclined to see “our side” as right, and the other side as lying and scheming. While very clever rent-seekers know this and try to use it to jerk us around, this does not mean that any particular group – or its spokesmen – has consciously sold itself out.  Rather, as William Butler Yeats famously noted, “the worst are full passionate intensity” – and each of us is good at the self-deception needed to provide the requisite conviction and self-righteousness.  Perhaps not only Al Gore, Jim Hansen and Horner’s frequent sparring partner Joe Romm share this quintessential human trait, but also Chris Horner himself?

A post on the Wall Street Journal`s enviro blog, Environmental Capital, reports on one disgruntled reaction to a recent school play called “Santa Goes Green”, and reports on a new children`s book (and website) by the same name.

The post closes with the sarcastic note, “No word yet on what kind of electricity is powering the web site’s servers. “

One wonders if the WSJ has heard of consumer choice or free markets (and is in favor of supporting either), since it doesn`t even raise the issue of parental/consumer preferences, which underlie the subject of the post.  Those who oppose the message of the book can peruse it and simply refuse to buy it for their child if they wish.  Similar principles apply to their child`s school play: they have some ability to object, although the degree of influence they may have may depend on whether the school is public or private.  Surely this would be an interesting point worth having readers think about.

Finally, of course, there is the final note of sarcasm – why does it not occur to the author to consider the legitimacy of consumer preferences for “green” power, and the difficulties that consumers face, in a regulated power market, for buying electricity sourced (and priced) the way they wish?  As Lew Rockwell points out, with truly free electricity markets, people would be able to put their money where their preference lie.   This is exactly the “Smart Grid” market that Google and GE have recently been targetting.

Why is the WSJ uninterested in discussing free markets, much less making the point that “green” consumers ought to be fans of free and competitive electricity markets?  So much easier to diss others` preferences, than to consider how to make allies for the free markets that would better allow all to satisfy their own preferences!

Yes, I’m referring to the bursting of the TVA holding dam in Kingston, TN a few days ago, leaving a Christmas Eve present of millions of cubic feet of wet fly ash several feet deep over hundreds of acres downstream, including now valueless private homes and property, and flowing into the Clinch River and Tennessee, where fish kills have been reported.  A video from a helicopter fly-over here; local coverage is here. 

Enviros and the press were fairly quick to point out that the federal government has declined, under industry pressure, to more strictly regulate the disposal of fly ash (replete with heavy metals and arsenic, and which has been captured in increasing amounts as clean air regulation requires greater “scrubbing” from power plant emissions) – but I’d like to make the point that this is the kind of faceless tort that we get from limited liability corporations, including federally-owned ones like the TVA , where shareholders have little interest and zero practical ability to monitor the risks created by the corporation. 

Further, this type of rent-seeking and money-influenced political balancing is
par for the course, and is a natural outcome of the replacement of the pro-industry, “pollute for free” era with the “government regulates industry” era that Walter Block speaks of.

Limited liability:  a gift of the state that keeps on giving!

Lubos Motl, a bright young Czech physicist with a winning way with those he considers idiots*, has decided to cogitate on fiat money and the US`s screwed up monetary system, and proposes to peg the dollar to the Dow:

You might think that I am going to defend the gold standard or something of this sort. Well, you are not infinitely far from the truth. But gold is obsolete, arbitrary, and dangerous. Someone can find a lot of gold in the future and we don’t want the world’s economy die at that moment. Gold doesn’t represent the overall economy – what people actually want to pay for – well. And if you think that all the commodities have fixed price ratios and only the “money” is fluctuating, note that the gold/silver price ratio has been oscillating frantically, by orders of magnitude in both directions. Pretty much everything can oscillate and does oscillate. 

The gold standard brings some advantages but now we have a more comprehensive framework to adjust the advantages: we want to suppress the most unstable and harmful degrees of freedom by redefining the money. There is one more general advantage of the gold: you know what you own. With money, you own pieces of paper whose value can be manipulated by arbitrary decisions of the government. And an uncertainty about the value of things – their ill-definedness – is creating havoc. The only reason why prices expressed in the fiat money don’t fluctuate wildly is that the other sellers don’t know any definition of the money, either. 😉 So we want to peg the money to something more well-defined: to redefine them. What is it? It’s the stocks.

I think Motl is hopelessly self-deceived on his proposal, but it`s one made in good faith and presents an opportunity to educate Motl and his audience on Austrian views of money, government and markets.  Any takers?

* Idiots of various stripes, but particularly envirofacist/commies, climate alarmists and yours truly; we have discussed Motl here in connection with Bret Stephens, my favorite befuddled neocon at the WSJ ).

Chris Horner of CEI has long been a near one-man band in attacking the excesses of the left with respect to concerns about climate change (while appearing to forget concerns by some on the right, corporate heads, scientists and defense/intelligence analysts as well).  I think Horner from time to time has some astute observations, but think that his passion comes at a cost of balance and self-awareness. 

His screed yesterday on NRO’s Planet Gore about climate “alarmists” on the left caught my eye because it precisely because it mirrored my own perception of what I saw in the neocon right with respect to the invasion of Iraq, the “War on Terror” and fear of Islamofacists:

“What does it tell you that some people rush to lash out with (typically personal) nastiness at the public expression of ideas of which they do not approve?

“After all, while we’re used to the Left’s mindset — that every one of their ideas needs to be a law and tolerance only extends so far as it suits their ideology or biases — as I have demonstrated, there is a remarkable Gang Green that seizes upon all heretical thought or speech and seeks to teach its purveyor a painful lesson.

“This is indeed a movement premised on fear — fear of debate, democracy, and science.”

I am not sure of Chris’s politics with regard to the War on Terror – he seems to have kept his lip securely buttoned on that issue even as words continued to fly on climate change – but I have twice blogged about one neocon – Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, who is very good at spotting what he thinks is unjustified fear-mongering by others even while ignoring his own.  Just as Chris Horner is quick to point to the nastiness of his opponents on climate change issues, while either ignoring his own or considering it perfectly justified.

Of course Joe Romm and others on the Left who fall into ad homs and demonization strategies with Chris are just as guilty; such we know is the predilection of those engaged in politicized struggles over resources that are either unowned, imperfectly owned or are “publicly” owned.  Behind each adversary lies someone seeking to obtain or protect a rent from the public. 

Does Austrian economics teach us to ignore the preferences of one rent-seeker in favor of another, or to strive to enable greater catallaxy by clarifying property rights or improving common-property institutions?  Are there any adults in the room, or simply squabblers?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Conservative Union have joined with environmental groups such as the Earth Policy Institute and the Environmental Working Group and with meat growers, food processors and others in the “Food Before Fuel” campaign, which on November 18 called on Congress and the incoming Obama Administration to repeal subsidies for ethanol in light of the harmful effects of such subsidies on “the environment, consumers and numerous industries”.   Thankfully, the press release also mentioned that the subsidies are a waste of taxpayers’ money.

This is the type of lobbying that ought to warm the hearts of libertarians of all stripes, even if it means getting into bed with environazis and other more run-of-the-mill rent-seekers.

Choice excerpts from the Food Before Fuel press release follow (emphasis added):

This November marks the 30th anniversary of the first government subsidies for ethanol. These subsidies now total nearly $5 billion annually.  In recent months, a wide number of independent voices have spoken out against ethanol subsidies as a failed policy that does more harm than good. This includes three Nobel Prize winning economists, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and Amartya Sen, as well as international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, the UN, the International Food Policy Research Institute and others. …

Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation commented, “Ethanol has been on the government payroll for 30 years.  After three decades of government policies subsidizing and supporting the ethanol industry, we find ourselves at the end of 2008 with more questions than ever before about the wisdom of this course.”

“On many issues, these groups gathered here today do not see eye to eye.  But we have come together because we all can agree that the government’s subsidization of the corn ethanol industry is a flawed policy that pits rural industries against one another, raises food prices for everyone and has failed to yield promised environmental benefits,” Brandenberger said.

Duane Parde, president of the National Taxpayers Union, was critical of the ethanol industry as a “demonstrative waste of taxpayer money in a time of economic hardship.”

”President-elect Obama and the 111th Congress have an opportunity to protect taxpayers and end business as usual,” Parde said. “We have spent 30 years and billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing the production of ethanol with little to show for it. Despite the subsidies, ethanol is not competitive in the marketplace and the industry only survives because politicians shovel our money into their pockets. We must end the bailouts and subsidies for industries that are unable or unwilling to stand on their own.”

Craig Cox, Midwest vice president of the Environmental Working Group, said that, “After 30 years of subsidies, ethanol is displacing only 3 percent of the gasoline we use each year, is likely increasing rather than decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, and is threatening our soil,  water and wildlife. Yet ethanol gets $3 out of every $4 of tax credits the federal government gives to all renewable alternatives including wind, solar and geothermal. It is time we direct our tax dollars to renewable alternatives, including biofuels, based on how well they protect our climate, our environment and our energy security.”

Jason Clay, senior vice president for market transformation at the World Wildlife Fund, noted, “In its work with local communities and habitats across the globe, the World Wildlife Fund has seen the negative impacts of the biofuel policy not only on the environment, but on vulnerable populations throughout the world.”

“Biofuels have a role to play in our response to energy independence and climate change, but the rush to produce them has been ill-considered. The United States must set an example to the rest of the world by pursuing sustainable agriculture and energy practices that meet scientifically based environmental performance standards,” Clay said.

Even the New York Times, in a November 17 editorial, has stood up against ethanol subsidies.

We’ll see if Obama and the Dems have the political will to say no to ADM and other ethanol subsidy recipients.  I’m not holding my breath, but am pleased to see such a broad effort nonetheless. 

H/T to David Zetland/Aguanomics.

Or a frightful thought – corporations cooperating with greenies to advance shared goals?  By sharing patents for free in order to clean up the environment and limit environmental footprints, are corporations being co-opted by socialists?  What corporations in their right minds would do such a thing – give away patent rights and cooperate with Environazis in establishing an “Eco-Patent Commons“? 

How about Bosch, DuPont, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, Sony, and Xerox?

A cynic might say this could be just good “corporate citizen” PR.  But an Austrian would applaud voluntary efforts to contribute to shared resolutions to shared problems, and note that it may make sense for corporations to enhance not only their public image but to strengthen internal cooperation by expressing widely shared preferences and aspirations.

Allow me to quote from a recent press release:

“Geneva, 8 September 2008 – Bosch, DuPont and Xerox Corporation have joined the Eco-Patent Commons, a first-of-its-kind business effort [launched in January 2008 by IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony in partnership with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)] to help the environment by pledging environmentally-beneficial patents to the public domain. The three companies and founding member Sony pledge environmentally friendly patents to the public.

“The newly pledged patents include:

• A cutting edge, Xerox technology that significantly reduces the time and cost of removing hazardous waste from water and soil;
• A technology developed by DuPont that converts certain non-recyclable plastics into beneficial fertilizer;
• Automotive technologies from Bosch that help lower fuel consumption, reduce emissions, or convert waste heat from vehicles into useful energy;
• Technologies developed by founding member Sony that focus on the recycling of optical discs.

“The Eco-Patent Commons … provides a unique opportunity for global business to make a difference — sharing innovation in support of sustainable development. The objectives of the Eco-Patent Commons are to facilitate the use of existing technologies to protect the environment, and encourage collaboration between businesses that foster new innovations.

“Today’s pledges more than double the number of environmentally friendly patents available to the public. They are available on a dedicated Web site hosted by the WBCSD (http://www.wbcsd.org/web/epc). Patents pledged to the Eco-Patent Commons may involve innovations directly related to environmental solutions or may be innovations in manufacturing or business processes where the solution also provides an environmental benefit, such as pollution prevention or the more efficient use of materials or energy.

“Since the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons in January, many of the patent holders have been contacted directly about their patents and at least three patents have already been used by others. “We are pleased that the commons is beginning to have an impact,” said Bjorn Stigson, president of the WBCSD. “We hope it will be a positive contribution to the challenge of technology diffusion around the world.”