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Summary: One of America's Leading Contrarians Has His Say
Review: This book sets out a comprehensive conservative position on the environment, declaring that Hard Greens (conservative) share the large objectives (actual or merely claimed) of the Soft Greens (liberal), but disagree with and reject much of what they diagnose as the source of despoliation and environmental decay.Accordingly, Hard Greens reject most of the solutions that Soft Greens prescribe. Libertarian activist Huber takes on chapter by chapter the big issues of environmental discourse, from scarcity and pollution to efficiency and waste disposal. Hard Green is a strongly argued critique of environmentalism from the political right. Huber argues that Soft Green environmental policies do exactly the opposite of what they intend, and lays out a clear program for a Hard Green approach to the environment. By making you re-examine your assumptions, this book makes the richest contribution ever made to the greening of the political mind. This book is a must read for anyone who really cares about preserving the environment. The author has combined his knowledge of true science with a lawyer's logic to destroy old myths and chart new pathways to keeping the planet truly green. Peter William Huber (1952- ) is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for Forbes. He holds both a doctorate in engineering from MIT and a JD from the Harvard Law School. Huber's previous books include Liability and Galileo's Revenge.
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Summary: as reviewed in Environmental History, Jan. 2002
Review: Since the mid-1970s there has been a movement to second-guess modern environmentalism. A recent book that makes extensive use of history in its critique is by Peter Huber, Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists, A Conservative Manifesto. Huber is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and writes regular columns for Forbes Magazine. The title Hard Green comes from a basic distinction Huber makes between "hard green" and "soft green." Huber argues that environmentalism was invented by Teddy Roosevelt, who when
using the term "conservation" really meant "environmental policy." T.R. and his contemporaries had seen the loss of natural environments and the depletion of natural resources, and they experienced it as an aesthetic loss. This is hard green. Hard greens believe the only real scarcity results from loss of wilderness. Since humans live on the surface of the planet, conserving the surface is what counts, and human needs should be provided not by exploiting the surface but by mining materials from beneath the surface. According to Huber, T.R.'s environmentalism was complete; nothing needed to be added. But then, according to Huber, there arose a new environmentalism in the late 1970s that is concerned
with invisible threats. This is soft green. Soft greens see threats in phenomena that are highly dispersed or distant in time, phenomena that can only be found by computer modeling. Soft greens follow the Precautionary Principle. They assume that if high doses of a substance are harmful, low doses must be harmful too. However well intentioned it is, Huber argues, soft is not truly green, for it lacks a sense of proportion. Soft green programs are prescriptive and complex and must be administered by large bureaucracies. Soft green computer models over-predict harms. Soft green economic theories are unrealistic and conjectural. Soft green remedies, which spend resources to redress imaginary harms, do not in the end conserve wilderness; to the contrary, they reduce wealth, which is what truly produces green. Thus, ironically, soft green programs ultimately produce environmental degradation. Huber considers soft green morally corrupt, likening it to communism. The hard green manifesto is to save the environment from the softs. In other words, the distinction Huber's makes is between 'right green' and 'wrong green.' One of the pleasures in reading Hard Green is keeping up with Huber's hard-driving intellect. Huber offers very perceptive critiques of classic environmental theories, including Malthus'
population hypothesis, the tragedy of the commons, and the theory of externalities. Huber argues that these doctrines err, first by not recognizing that nature repairs itself, and second by not considering human adaptation through market processes. For these reasons, Huber argues, the projected environmental disasters have not occurred and will not in the future. But Hard Green also contains unsettling discrepancies. For example, Huber presents the hard/soft distinction as a clean differentiation between traditional conservation and modern environmentalism. But this creates difficulty in knowing how to address modern environmental problems such as air pollution. Modern air pollution problems are categorically distinct in character from those that were recognized before the mid-20th Century. How does the hard green philosophy deal with modern air pollution? Not very well, actually. While Huber asserts that hard greens are concerned about pollution, he notes that their concern runs only to the aesthetics of pollution. That is, the reason pollution is unacceptable is that it is ugly. It also follows, taking his premise out to its logical extension, that unseen substances must be harmless. Thus, a hard green would be concerned about a visible smoke nuisance but not the toxicological effects of smoke's chemical constituents. Nor would a hard green be concerned about lead exhausted from leaded gasoline, toxic industrial emissions, or exposure to radiation, all of which have toxic properties that are not visible. All of these implications contradict what we have learned over the last fifty years. To rescue the hard green concept from the observation that it is inapplicable to modern environmental problems, Huber admits that unseen substances might be harmful. But his rescue effort only digs itself deeper by arguing in addition that since one cannot know which substances are the harmful ones nothing should be done about them as a class and that their harm will be mitigated by dilution. The only consistent thread running through this set of arguments is Huber's denial that modern environmental problems should be addressed as such. Taken literally, Huber's argument defines
them into nonexistence. Indeed, one gets the sense that since he doesn't like the remedies for modern environmental problems he has to deny their existence so that the remedies won't be
necessary. Defining away modern environmental problems makes it unnecessary to address the practical questions associated with them: how to determine the extent of such hazards? how to assign responsibilities? who shall be liable for breach of a responsibility? With modern environmental problems defined into non-existence, early 20th Century conservation approaches are all that is required. And so, when one plays out Huber's argument one finds it difficult to accept for two fundamental reasons: (1) that modern environmental problems are categorically different in nature from early 20th Century conservation, and (2) that in consequence T.R. couldn't have meant "environmental policy" when he said "conservation" because the kind of problems that gave rise to environmental policy as we know the term now had not occurred yet. Thus, it is an anachronism for Huber to call T.R. an "environmentalist," at least as we use the term now, and that mistake leads to unwarranted inferences. In all, Hard Green is a provocative work that because of its persistent application of central ideas to all manner of policy questions could become, as touted, a conservative manifesto. But
the historian is challenged to examine the quality of the factual premises upon which the whole construct is based.
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Summary: Neocon ramblings
Review: Typical ramblings of a neocon internationalist. His shoddy arguments are easy to debunk, and reflect a poor understanding of the severity of the environmental crisis. Seek works by Pentti Linkola, Savitri Devi, and others for a more informed view of the roots of this crisis.
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Summary: Hard Green -- A Surprisingly Good Book
Review: The issues addressed in this book gained popular attention with the publication of The Limits to Growth in 1972. Peter Huber begins by contrasting Theodore Roosevelt's concept of wilderness conservation with Al Gore's theory of a coming environmental "avalanche." Huber's assessment of the issues is incisive and the product of long deliberation by a very talented MIT engineering professor. Combined with his sophisticated knowledge of law, he writes analysis of the caliber that won Ronald Coase a Nobel Prize in economics. The reader is lead to a very convincing set of conclusions and gains confidence in reasonability. The material is suitable for either the environmental scientist with an advanced degree or the high school student wishing to read an informative and entertaining book. Peter Huber is such a good writer that no reader will wish to skip a single page.
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Summary: Not Very Good
Review: This book is just cynical rambling. It reads like a very, very long editorial. There really is no value to this book. Huber may have some interesting ideas, but they are not truly explored in detail or with examples. In fact, most of the book is just attacking what he calls radical, ignorant environmentalists. His manifesto at the back of the book are simply summaries of conservative envionrmentalist ideals. If you are doing any kind of research, skip it. This will not help you. If you just want to read a representive of conservative, right wing environmentalism, this will introduce you to some ideas, but it really is just garbage. I suggest you pick up an older text called Environmental Overkill by Dixy Lee Ray. It presents a stronger, more in depth argument without the cynical attitude.
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Summary: A breath of fresh air
Review: Hard Green is a persuasively written examination of the often misleading arguments and questionable "science" employed by the hard-core eco-utopian policy makers in their quest to grow their memberships and promote their, to some observers, exclusionary agendas. Recommended reading for anyone who wants to understand the methodological track record of green-advocacy groups.
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Summary: redundant green
Review: The arguments made for the superiority of a market approach to environmental protection are good and largely persuasive. However, I found the same arguments made over and over as I read rather than additional development of the arguments and I got tired of the book before the end. I also found the author's polemical style got in the way of his arguments.
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Summary: You may not agree with it at all, but it makes you think.
Review: I had kind of a strange reaction to this book. One concept Peter Huber presents is the idea of conservation in the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. His point is that conservation is achieved but setting aside large chunks of land, and letting that land be "wild land". Fine by me, you'll get no argument from me on that point. I don't think that anybody who is serious about conservation would have a problem with that approach. From that point on, is where myself and many of the "soft greens" start to disagree with Huber. He talks about how the ideas of resource limitation and over population are just myths proported by soft green (who are the bad guys in his mind) who are over dependent on simplistic computer models. He states that only free markets can overcome pollution and industrial waste problems. Some of these concepts are hard to swallow. He uses the classic tactic of generalizing his oppontent's arguments until they become silly. When you do this, it is hard to take your arguments too seriously. I think the real value of this book is not so much his ideas, but that he challenges the environmental community to re-evaluate its thinking. There has certainly been over zealous claims and predictions in the environmental community. Huber is stabbing at the foundations that helped produce these. I'm still a student and I don't have a wealth of experience to draw upon, so I really can't say with a high degree of certainty that Huber is totally right of totally wrong (it sounds like he is being overly optimistic about a market based solution to our environmental woes). This book certainly pisses people off, but if because of the book causes an "environmentalist" re-thinks his/her core beliefs, then it has served a purpose.
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Summary: Hard Green
Review: For an in depth analysis of the public relations industry that Huber represents and how they attempt to shape public opinion and law read _Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future_ by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber...
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Summary: Hardly Green
Review: I would not call myself an environmentalist, but I am a scientist. The author has written a poorly argued book in that it misrepresents the people he is arguing against, and is based on bad science. Unfortunately, this reflects poorly on conservatives in that it makes us appear to be sneaky, unintelligent, and disingenuous. Mr. Huber does a great disservice to the conservative movement, and I can only hope that this poorly researched book was the result of ignorance and not malice.
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