Environment

There's an environmental villian loose in America. This criminal has leaked radioactive waste into drinking water, dumped sewage into national parks, poured PCBs into rivers, and contaminated at least 61,155 sites around the United States.

Who is this environmental villian? Is it Exxon? DuPont? General Motors? No. It's the federal government. According to the Boston Globe, the federal government has "become the worst polluter in the land."

Experts say the cost of cleaning up the damage done by federal agencies and the military could exceed $300 billion. That's five times the cost of environmental harm done by all private businesses combined.

Even more chilling, many federal agencies are exempt from environmental laws; individual bureaucrats are immune from criminal prosecution; and Congress even passed a law that protects the military from having to pay environmental fines.

As a result, the Boston Globe noted, the federal government "has a license to pollute." If you've never heard about these violations, you're not alone. Environmental activists like to criticize private companies, while pretending that only government can "save" us from polluters.

Libertarians know better. We want our families to be able to drink clean water and breathe clean air. And we know that trusting the environmental scofflaws in the federal government to make that happen is like trusting a fox to guard the hen house.

Libertarians propose to get a cleaner, healthier environment by making government officials personally liable for the environmental damage they do; repealing taxes and regulations that discourage free-market environmentalism; and making polluters pay for their crimes.