Hard Green: Saving The Environment From The Environmentalists: A Conservative Manifesto

by Peter W. Huber

This book sets out the case for Hard Green, a conservative environmental agenda. Modern environmentalism, Peter Huber argues, destroys the environment. Captured as it has been by the Soft Green oligarchy of scientists, regulators, and lawyers, modern environmentalism does not conserve forests, oceans, lakes, and streams - it hastens their destruction. For all its scientific pretension, Soft Green is not green at all. Its effects are the opposites of green.This book lays out the a return to Yellowstone and the National Forests, the original environmentalism of Theodore Roosevelt and the conservation movement. Chapter by chapter, Hard Green takes on the big issues of environmental discourse from scarcity and pollution to efficiency and waste disposal. This is the Hard Green Rediscover T.R. Reaffirm the conservationist ethic. Expose the Soft Green fallacy. Reverse the Soft Green agenda. Save the environment from the environmentalists.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Science, Ecology, Nature, Cultural

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 28, 1972

About the author

Peter William Huber earned a law degree from Harvard University in 1982, and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a partner at the law firm of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, an author who writes on drug development, energy, technology, and the law and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Reviews

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Huber demonstrates that the green movement is mostly brown. The greatest threat to the environment would be your standard issue environmentalist, what Huber calls soft greens. People who care about the environment, but who want to depend on markets instead of coercion he calls hard greens. This is a great book. There are some evolutionary asides that are a distraction, so ignore those.

[Maurean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up at the Friends of the Library book sale because it sounded interesting, but didn’t really expect to glean much useful information from its pages (because, even though I consider myself a ‘middle-of-the-road’ kinda gal, I’ve always thought my “green” views to be somewhat ‘left-leaning’.) However, after reading the book, I find some of my viewpoints were, perhaps misguided?? Ill-informed? I don’t know, but there was a lot of valid information provided here by Mr. Huber, that it has me re-thinking some of my previously tightly-held “soft-green” beliefs.

For my own ease of future reference, I am listing SEVERAL notable quotes, here:

~When we pave paradise, it isn’t any trace poison in the asphalt that kills the flowers, it’s the steamroller. (pg. xvii)

~Forcing efficiency upon consumers does nothing to make them more frugal, except insofar as it makes them poorer. And it is not poverty that makes people green. It is wealth. (pg. xxv)

~Life cannot be contained. The choice is not between life with externalities [pollution] and life without. Life is an externalizing state of being. (pg. 23)

~The(se) chemical biocides in nature’s own arsenal of self-defense chalk up “carcinogenic” on every standard test for such things, and we consume several grams of them per day, ten thousand times more than pesticides made by man. (pg. 27)

~Fearing the complex nuke, we burned an extra 40 quadrillion BTU’s of coal instead, and now we fear the complex greenhouse. (pg. 55)

~Efficiency is not green. However attractive or enriching they may be, purity and efficiency don’t directly advance green objectives at all. (pg. 58)

~Efficiency remains a perfectly sensible thing to pursue, in power plants, refrigerators, in agriculture, too. It is as useful to save energy, as it is to save time or Christmas wrapping paper. Which is to say, sometimes its worth the trouble, and sometimes it isn’t. (pg. 74)

~”Nature it seems, fared better on its own,” Scientific American concluded (regarding the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill), in places where the clean up was left to the wind and the waves. The litany of demands for gold-plated remediation comes from people more interested in cutting down capitalism than in growing trees. (pg.99)

~The Softs see scarcity everywhere, scarcity of wood pulp, corn, aluminum, and oil…The Hards discern only one scarcity, scarcity of wilderness, of untouched forest, lake, river, shore and ocean…the looming scarcity of wilderness and wildlife at the interface. (pg. 108)

~University of Nebraska Professor Craig S. Marxsen calculates that “appropriately constructed landfills could capture roughly 2 billion tons of carbon annually, right now, and virtually stop global warming cold in its tracks.” (pg. 115)

~North America in fact absorbs about as much carbon dioxide as it emits, because lumber, agriculture and natural reforestation take more carbon out of the air than burning fossil fuels emit into it. The prevailing winds move west to east, and average CO2 levels drop as they do. (pg. 129)

~The strong reason for caution about micro-environmental regulation is that it can get so uselessly expensive, so very fast. The pursuit itself can rapidly come to consume more energy, material, and time, endanger more lives, generate more pollution, and dissipate more value than the things pursued. (pg. 131)

~They [pollutants] have become yet another instrument of the victim culture, in which every individual defines his own environmental poison and demands special protection from it. (pg. 136)

~Few Soft Greens literally sweep before they step, but their over-achieving prescription is much the same…The whole ideology: Don’t produce, don’t reproduce, don’t plow, don’t plant, don’t grow, don’t cut, don’t hunt, don’t fish, don’t travel, don’t discard, don’t build. “Environmental activism” is, in truth, an oxymoron. (pg. 166)

~We should revere life on Earth not because we fear catastrophic failure, but because life is a good that requires no further justification. (pg. 184)

~The divide is not between the reckless and the cautious, still less between those who would act, and those who would stand by an watch. It is between those who are certain they know certain things and those who are certain they don’t. (pg. 189)

[Eugenio Negro · Rating 1 out of 5]

NOTE: DID NOT READ THE WHOLE BOOK.
Normally I never publish anything without reading the whole book, but this incomprehensibly poorly-written, arrogantly unsupported and cockily circular mess warrants an exception as a warning to potential readers. As others have commented on Goodreads, the author circles around the usual Mises-Institute belief that we can have our cake and eat it too (drilling for oil is good but so is conserving a ton more of land... where? when? whose?) without providing a scrap of evidence for his arguments, aside presenting nonexistent geologic, ecologic or even basic chemical knowledge. If this were written by a high-school junior, it would get a D for not following directions.
Worse, the author replaces evidence for picking on what he terms "soft conservation," with a particular tantrum about supposedly deep-state, non-libertarian-localist "models" (this was published after the 90s when environmental and climate models were still pretty new) and their influence on policy, without backing the critique of "soft" with case studies. I don't like nonprofit limousine liberal conservation either, in fact I resent it probably more than the author does, but I have stacks of concrete and several firsthand examples.
Attempting the characteristic 80s-90s sleight-of-hand of presenting incredibly complex ecological problems in basic economic, business-terms, the author handpicks outdated and largely theoretical predictions about climate catastrophe and then simply states that they were wrong, like the drunk guy in the Applebys who won't get off how you bet on Green Bay instead of Denver, even going back again and again to Malthus and Rousseau. Is Gingrich and McConnell staying up late on Malthus and Rousseau??? When he runs out of steam and still provides no concrete cases, he rests on Reaganish chestnuts like, the quakers have something right (Reagan 1967: it turns out there ARE simple solutions!).
And for how much he rails against Al Gore and his book (without which it is clear that this book, as a response to which, would not have a single marketing plank), the author and Al Gore use the same tactics: flattening ecology and the need to live within the earth to a single-track ethical math problem --in Gore's case, moral value, as Huber sneers, and in Huber's case, extractive economic value, while the cake is being had as well through conserving "more land". A slap in the face to native Americans and other indigenous, earth-living people, a denial of our continent's reality, an adderall-fueled sales pitch (because cocaine is immoral).
Which brings us to the problem of the author's presenting zero concrete steps forward, unless I missed them, because again I didn't finish it. "Conserve more land," "Rediscover Theodore Roosevelt," "privatize pollution," "Takings," what does ANY ONE PERSON do right now? Nothing.
Misguided, messy, and intentionally, down-country obsolete. Why does every book marketed aggressively as "conservative" have to sound like those Gingrich books that they sell at Fedex? Hits all "conservative" marks and sure to keep fooling the lazy-minded for years to come.

[Garret Seinen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good analysis of our greatest problem.

Where to begin a rational discussion about how we should live has eluded those who see a different path.. This book helps to show where ideas diverge and what must be done to bring so satisfaction and some sanity to a challenging problem. Living well in a clean world is an admirable goal and the author claims that it is achievable..

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. Keep an open mind. This book still offers solutions for being “green”.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was really impressed with this. Amazon claims it's hard to review this book because of the paucity of conservative books on environmental policy. This book makes such a strong argument for conservation and capitalism as the single saviors of the environment, I'm not sure why we'd need any other books.

Huber rips computer models for the shams they are, and details how collecting diffuse energy sources through solar, wind and biofuels are the worst forms of alternative energy. He makes convincing arguments for converting to nuclear energy wherever and whenever possible.

Also, his explanation of capitalism and the free market as the best method for allocating scarce resources to protect the environment is spot on. Creating wealth doesn't destroy the environment it protects it.

The best and simplest thing to say: Teddy Roosevelt would approve of this book.

[James Igoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really wanted to read a contrarian environmental view, either to improve my own environmentalism or just to clarify the issues. Huber's concepts were aimed at the right target, misguided environmental policy - his own idea is using recovered land as the ultimate goal of our policies - but I was gravely disappointed by his lack of supporting data.

[Miriam-Lea · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think the author forgot that you need to back up at least some of your opinion with fact, especially when applying harsh criticism of "micro-environmentalism" as he calls it. This is unfortunate since his argument for mass land conservation should be taken more seriously.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huber points out clearly why Green isn't actually very green at all, but Capitalism is. He fired off with a weird thought every once in awhile, and his argument is injured by his Darwinism. Still, a good book and considerably more constructive and clever than the usual screed.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting subject matter. I didn't have time to finish the book, but I read/skimmed through the parts that particularly interested me.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

An argument for conservation , not environmentalism. Compelling.