Capitalism is not a perfect system. However, John Stossel claimed in a new video that it is better for the environment than socialism. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (otherwise known as AOC) (D-N.Y.) insisted that socialism makes the environment better for everyone, not just the elite. Tom Palmer, Atlas Network, refuted her statement in Stossel’s video.
According
to Stossel, Palmer has personal experience in capitalist nations as well as
socialist ones. In fact, he “spent lots of time in social countries,” and he is
convinced that “environmental-movement socialists are wrong about what’s ‘green.’”
Palmer commented, “We tried socialism…. We ran the experiment. It was a catastrophe.
Worst environmental record on the planet.”
Palmer
shared a story about sparrows in China. Socialist leaders noticed that “sparrows
ate valuable grain,” so they decided that the sparrows had to go. Government
officials killed sparrows, while others encouraged the people to kill them. “Billions
of birds were killed.” The result was no sparrows to eat insects, and the “insects
multiplied. Bugs killed more crops than the sparrows had,” and “People starved
as a consequence.” That experience was just one of the mistakes made by the
central planners in China.
China’s central planners keep making
mistakes. Many Chinese lakes and rivers are bright green. Fertilizer runoff
created algae blooms that kill all fish. A Lancet study says Chinese air
pollution kills a million people per year.
Wherever socialism is tried, it creates
nasty pollution.
China
is not the only nation where socialism is bad for the environment. Josef Stalin
wanted to grow cotton in the Soviet Union, so his central planners selected a
spot near the Aral Sea. “They drained so much water that the sea, once the
fourth-biggest inland lake in the world, shrank to less than half its size.”
Palmer said, “Soviet planners caused catastrophic environmental costs to the
whole population.”
Socialists
in this nation think that they can make socialism work better than it has in
Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, and wherever else it has been tried.
They think that they are smarter.
According
to Palmer, socialists in Russia dump heavy metals and radioactive waste in what
a New York Times op-ed claims is “the world’s largest system of most protected
nature reserves.” However, capitalists also hurt the environment:
Capitalists destroy nature, too. Free
societies do need government rules to protect the environment. But free markets
with property rights often protect nature better than bureaucrats can.
Private farmers, explains Palmer, are “concerned
about the ability of the farm to grow food next year, year after year, [even]
after the farmer is gone. Why? Because the farm has a capital value. That’s the
‘capital’ in capitalism. They want to maximize that.”
Capitalism also protects the environment
because it creates wealth. When people aren’t worried about starving or
freezing, they get interested in protecting nature. That’s why capitalist
countries have cleaner air.
Also, capitalists can afford to pay for
wild animal preserves. “When no one has property rights and people are poor,
tigers and elephants are considered a burden…. They kill them,” says Palmer. “When
you’re wealthier … you care about the environment.”
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