Today's online edition of the Detroit Free Press reports that The Great Leader's own Environmental Pollution -- I mean Protection -- Agency will not take governmental action against a BP refinery based in northern Indiana from dumping pollution into Lake Michigan.
Here's an excerpt from the article which should concern every pro-freedom American across across the libertarian divide:
CHICAGO -- Rebuffing bipartisan pressure from Congress, the Bush administration's top environmental regulator Tuesday declined to stop a BP refinery in northwest Indiana from dumping more pollution into Lake Michigan.
Stephen Johnson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he saw nothing wrong with the permit Indiana regulators awarded in June to BP, the first company in years allowed to increase the amount of toxic chemicals pumped into the Great Lakes.
Although the federal government has been pushing for more than three decades to eliminate pollution in the Great Lakes, the EPA didn't object to the BP permit -- part of a $3-billion expansion of its refinery in Whiting, Ind.
This is grossly unethical, not to mention pathetic. It's bad enough that Democrats cop to being socialists and want to control every aspect of all Americans on our own soil; it's worse that the Bush administration -- a GOP administration as it is -- employs libertarian rhetoric to disguise its support for a governmental system of environmental protection....which is more like environmental pollution.
At least there's a significant difference between libertarians, Democrats, and Republicans on the issue of environmental protection. Democrats oppose private property rights and private ownership of land and, for the most part, oppose refineries and oil companies from operating on those rented lands. They also want the government to expand its ownership of the land and act as the champion of environmental stewardship, even if they do pollute the land, the lakes, the rivers, and the oceans as well. Republicans want to subsidize oil companies that lease government property and allow government agencies like the EPA and the Department of Interior to issue permits allowing companies to dump such hazardous chemicals and materials in the lakes and other bodies of water, which are government property anyway. While they go out of their way to oppose government ownership and control of property and handling of hazardous waste and material on the land and employ laissez-faire and private property rights rhetoric, they don't mind the government subsidizing businesses that have no incentive to protect and care for the land on which their businesses reside and don't own, but rather pollute on the property which they are leasing.
Libertarians, on the other hand, believe in private property rights and want the government to stay out of the environmental protection business. At least they want the free market to take over protecting the environment and restore individuals and businesses' ability to exercise their private property rights -- items that have been long since excluded from public debate for the longest time.
Posts
