Environmentalism: The Perfect Cover Story for Authoritarian Control

Climate Policy Isn’t About the Planet — It’s About Power

Across the Western world, governments are tightening the screws in the name of environmental protection. Carbon taxes rise. Energy costs explode. Surveillance is normalized through “smart” meters, black boxes, and inspections. In places like Alberta and the UK, citizens are punished for ordinary consumption while being herded toward state-approved behaviors.

We are told this is necessary because markets supposedly fail to account for environmental harm. We are told only centralized, socially enlightened governments can correct these failures. And we are told resistance is selfish, ignorant, or dangerous.

This narrative is effective because it sounds scientific. But it rests on a profound lie.

“Externalities” — The Academic Excuse for Control

The cornerstone of modern environmental intervention is the idea of “externalities.” According to mainstream economists, individuals and businesses are too narrow-minded to consider the full social consequences of their actions. Left alone, they will overproduce pollution and underproduce virtue. The state, we are told, must step in to correct this imbalance.

This framing assumes two things: first, that the costs and benefits of human actions can be objectively measured; and second, that government possesses the knowledge and incentives to do so accurately. Both assumptions are false.

Every human action produces ripple effects on others. These effects are infinite, subjective, and unquantifiable. To single out certain consequences as “externalities” while ignoring the rest is arbitrary. There is no market price for subjective harm, and there is no scientific method for comparing one person’s discomfort to another’s convenience.

When officials cite figures like the “GDP cost of carbon,” they are not doing economics. They are performing theater.

The Calculation Problem Never Went Away

Critics of markets accuse them of inefficient calculation, yet they hand this impossible task to institutions that are structurally incapable of performing it. Governments do not operate under profit and loss. They do not receive honest price signals. They acquire resources through coercion. Their bureaucrats are rewarded for spending more, not saving or innovating.

As Ludwig von Mises demonstrated conclusively, the problem of economic calculation is infinitely worse under government control. Yet environmental policy openly demands that the state calculate optimal levels of energy use, consumption, production, and sacrifice for millions of individuals with different values and circumstances.

This is not market correction. It is soft socialism dressed up in green language.

Carbon Taxes Are Central Planning with Better Branding

Carbon taxes and credits are often marketed as “market-based solutions.” This is a deliberate deception. A price imposed by force is not a market price. It is a political weapon.

Like all coercive regulation, environmental mandates produce unintended consequences. Businesses relocate. Production methods shift on paper while pollution remains unchanged. Costs are passed down to consumers. Officials respond not with humility, but with escalation.

This is how intervention always works. When policy fails, the answer is never less power — only more.

The Real Environmental Issue: Property Rights

Most harms blamed on “externalities” are, in reality, violations of property rights. Pollution becomes endemic when no one owns the resource being abused. During the Industrial Revolution, courts protected politically favored producers by allowing them to damage air and waterways in the name of “progress.” That precedent haunts us still.

Where property rights are clear and enforceable, harm can be addressed without bureaucratic micromanagement. As Robert Coase explained, individuals can negotiate solutions when ownership is defined. Markets coordinate responsibility far better than regulations ever could.

People take care of what they own. They conserve what has long-term value. State-managed land, by contrast, becomes a feeding trough for lobbyists and cronies who have no stake in sustainability.

Environmental Damage Is a Symptom of Statism, Not Markets

Nearly every major environmental abuse occurs on public land or under government protection. These are the classic conditions of the tragedy of the commons. When everyone is responsible, no one is accountable.

Externalities are not evidence of market failure. They are evidence of government crowding markets out.

Yet instead of restoring ownership and freedom, the state exploits these problems to justify further expansion.

Green Policy Is the Engine of Modern Authoritarianism

Environmentalism has become a conveyor belt for surveillance, taxation, and behavioral control. Carbon schemes funnel billions through opaque institutions. Energy policy becomes a lever to discipline the population. Compliance is rewarded. Dissent is punished.

Officials know these policies leak. They know behavior barely changes. But abandoning intervention would mean admitting failure, so they double down. This is the dynamic Mises warned about: intervention begets intervention until freedom disappears.

The UK’s experience is a warning to us all. What began as targeted environmental measures metastasized into universal taxation and monitoring. Prosperity fell. Freedom eroded. And the state expanded exactly as predicted.

Power Doesn’t Serve the Environment — It Consumes It

History is littered with regimes that promised progress and delivered ruin. Cambodia. The USSR. Maoist China. In every case, centralized power destroyed both human life and natural resources. Environmental priorities always vanish the moment they conflict with political survival.

It is naïve to believe today’s rulers are different.

Freedom, Not Force, Protects the Earth

Almost everyone wants clean air, clean water, and responsible use of resources. The disagreement is not over the goal, but the means. Economic freedom and strong property rights achieve sustainability through incentives and knowledge. State intervention achieves compliance through fear.

Environmentalism has become the most convenient moral cover for authoritarian expansion in our lifetime. Until people recognize this, the machinery of control will keep grinding forward — greener in language, harsher in reality.

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Because the biggest threat to the environment isn’t capitalism.
It’s unchecked power.