2013 Is the Year to Support / Donate to Market-Based Solutions

As year 2013 coming to an end, you will be getting a whole bunch of donation requests; calendars, stickers, labels; many of them from environment non-profits. Having suffered a full year or two through this “plastic bags killed thousands of marine lives including seabirds every single year” which is myth taking on the appeal of truth, seeing these funky environmental non-profits humming louder and louder, spreading myths in schools, city councils and state governments, it is time that we say enough is enough.

They, the vocal minority have been having too much fun. They have forgotten the words shame and truth.

It is time that we, the silent majority exercise our will and power, and put our money to work.

Tear off a piece of the calendar; send it back to the president with a note: we can no longer support your organization, if you help perpetuate myths and misrepresentations that are scientifically unsupportable. The bag bans make the retailers pay – for pissing off shoppers. Bagging customer purchases is the least of customer service retailers should provide. Else, the shoppers will just shut their wallets and stay home. They are making consumers pay. I have to buy plastic bags to line my trash bins. I had to argue with Safeway on why I need a “plastic produce bag” – not the “plastic shopping bag with handles” to wrap packages of meat that were leaking meat juice. Thanks to you all.

Media like KQED is asking for your year-end donation, too. It is time to tell them: we need to hear from the other sides; from the consumers and businesses. We do not assume that environment non-profits are angels. They are human. By nature; human has weakness. Human are bias, by the paradigm they grew up with, and by the limitation of their knowledge. We will not take whatever they say at face value. Give us the other side of the story, and we will decide which side is more right. We will support you only if you give us comprehensive stories; i.e. when the voices from both sides covered.

If you want to donate; it is time to support organizations that promote market-based solutions as listed below. The world is not black and white. We are dealing with usage of resources – they are by nature scarce. It is always about trade off. And priorities change over time, too; for we do not go all the way to solve a problem one hundred percent, with last few percents causing an exorbitant amount of money.  A lot of time, when it is good enough, we want to move on spending our precious money solving the next bigger problem; that is what market based solutions do. When we allow market to play out, organizations / businesses see the problems/opportunity will try to meet the needs in the most efficient way. Their reward is their very survival or profit. A lot of innovation / progress were driven by market-based solutions; such as the development of battery used in hybrid or electric cars. Products / solutions might take decade to improve; such is the case with battery. We do not solve a problem overnight with emotional appeal, or media sensation, or myths, or hypes. Development is a slow; gradual, decade-long commitment in continuous research and improvement, which finally deliver the superb products. 

Please support these organizations instead. Dig deep and donate the most that you could:

-   Washington Policy Center (www.washingtonpolicy.org)

-  Cascade Policy Institute, Portland – ran by John Charles who had ran The Oregon Environmental Council for 16 years, who grew disillusioned by the leftist ideological, comfortable, ineffective policies that hurt the environment (http://cascadepolicy.org)

-    Hoover Institution, Stanford University (www.hoover.org)
-  Reason Foundation, Los Angeles (www.reason.org)
-  Goldwater Institute, Arizona (https://goldwaterinstitute.org/) 
- Young America's Foundation (https://www.yaf.org/)
-   Bag the Ban! (www.bagtheban.com)

I challenge you read these books, and to gift them away as Christmas presents; to educate our people, to make them informed decision makers / citizens.

- Eco-fads: how the rise of trendy environment book is harming the environment, Todd Myers, 2011

- The Skeptical Environmentalist, by Bjorn Lomborg – Lomborg “using data from United Nation, Lomborg found the litany of environmental concerns so repeated in the media were flawed and exaggerated.”

- The Green Wave, Bonner Cohen – how the environmental non-profits channel hundred of millions of dollar each year to promote their causes

- The Honest Broker, Dr. Roger Pielke Jr – on the interplay of science and politics, how we tend to be most comfortable making decisions based on what is most comfortable (our personal values) vs. the least comfortable (complex scientific analysis)

- Green-Collar Jobs, Alan T. Durning, 1999

And books on how liberals are silencing free speech:
1. The Silencing: How the left is killing free speech, by Kirsten Powers
2. The Intimidation Game: How the left is silencing free speech, by Kimberley Strassel.
3. Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth, by Sharyl Attkisson.

Donate! Support a great cause!