[lbo-talk] Environmentalism poses a problem for libertarian ideology

[Charles Brown]

"I have written before about the problem with the procedural accounts
of property rights, but here I want to just accept the libertarian
property rights premise. Somehow individuals can grab up pieces of the
world and exclude those pieces from everyone else forever. Once those
individuals become owners of their respective property, nobody else
can touch that property or do anything whatsoever to that property
without their consent. Coming onto my property without my consent is a
form of trespass under this picture. Doing anything to my property —
whether it be painting it, dumping stuff on it, or causing some other
harm to it — is totally off limits.

So environmentalists point out that carbon emissions are warming the
planet, one consequence of which is that harm will be done to the
property of others. Most environmentalists — being the leftists that
they generally are — do not make too much of the property rights
issues, but one certainly could. Coal plants release particulates into
the air which land on other people’s property. But no permission is
ever granted for that. Coal plants do not contract with every nearby
property owner to allow for them to deposit small amounts of
particulate matter on their neighbors’ land. They are guilty of a form
of property trespass."

http://mattbruenig.com/2011/12/21/environmentalism-poses-a-problem-for-libertarian-ideology/