Perhaps the title to this review is incorrect, after all can a religion ever be realistic? Clearly the answer is "no" as all religions require an extensive amount of faith on the part of the believer. Unfortunately, however, this new religion has become a Federal Government policy -- one might argue in violation of the Constitution's prohibition that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." (1st Amendment to the Constitution.)
At any rate, perhaps the primary theme in this collection of essays dealing with the trend toward hugely bloated and costly environmental bureaucracies at the federal level is that not only is this trend excessively costly, but ineffective, wasteful, counter-productive to its purposes, based on junk science, and ill-conceived. The case is made that the free-rider problem extends into the government bureaucracy (and in the political sphere) due to there being no risk to politicians or bureaucrats for bad decisions and only benefits to them for passing costs and restrictions on to others. In essence, the federal bureaucrats and politicians are the free-riders that render their own actions ineffective. (The free-rider problem is normally stated as a reason for government action in that if private actions were taken then many people would receive benefits from those actions although they had incurred no costs or risks associated with those actions.)
This work also impinges on the supposed correlation between the industrial revolution and global warming and the idea that humans are bringing about global warming. That the facts are actually otherwise (see Solomon; "The Deniers", Murray; "The Really Inconvenient Truths", and Spencer; "Climate Confusion") clearly makes the human causation of global warming an act of faith (in response to extensive and often hysterical propaganda.)
The essays are organized into eight groups as follows:
The Seeds of Environmental Bureaucracy.
Global Issues.
Endangered Species.
Entrepreneurship, Property Rights & Land Use.
Urban Environments.
The By-products of Environmental Bureaucracy.
Debating Market-Based Environmentalism.
Environmental Philosophy.
Most of the essays in these sections recount specific policies by government or environmentists and the impacts of those policies. Overwhelmingly the effects of those polices have turned out to be negative or having very detrimental unintended consequences (one is tempted to say "unexpected consequences" due to a lack of thorough understanding of the problems, reliance on junk science, or simple incompetent or inane actions.)
My favorite essay was the one by Nelson on "Does 'Existence Value' Exist? Environmental Economics Encroaches on Religion." Nelson concludes that the concept of existence value is not scientific but rather a quasi-religious concept that creates more problems than it solves. It answers a religious question with economics that leads to absurdities and was a typical attempt to find justification for an idea that was wrong-headed from the beginning and to help maintain an unneeded bureaucracy.
In short, this is a highly important book that should be required reading in all political science and economics curriculae in American universities. Unfortunately, I note that I am only the third reviewer and the obvious conclusion is that this work has received little notice or wide dissemination. That is truly a shame. And once again, read the 1 star review to see the usual ad hominem attack, this time against the publisher, The Independent Institute, when anyone challenges political correctness or conventional wisdom. One is tempted to reference Hayek, "The Road To Serfdom", to some readers. Political correctness and the creeping socialism it contains clearly fits Hayek's concepts of the dangers of organizations like the environmental bureaucracy leading us like lemmings into totalitarism.
I highly recommend this book. The reader is advised to read it carefully and make up his own mind rather than simply buying into the propaganda that has been spewed forth on these subjects by special interests and religious zealots since 1970. One hopes it is not too late for rationality to enter the fray.
The reader would be also advised to read Niskinen's work on "bureaupathic" behavior and the tendency of bureaucrats to maximize their budgets and increase their bureaucracies at all times at others' expense. Many times government bureaucracies are not the solution -- they are the problem.
