March Meeting
Details
We will be joining The Entrepreneurship Club, ECOSU, and AKPsi.
Speaker: Reed Watson, a research fellow and the Director of Applied Programs at PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana. He is also the Co-Director of PERC’s Enviropreneur Institute. Reed’s expertise
lies in developing and promoting market-based solutions to natural resource conflicts, particularly for water and wildlife.
Reed will hold a discussion regarding Free Market Environmentalism (FME)-- an approach to environmental problems that focuses on improving environmental quality using property rights and markets. FME emphasizes three important points:
1. Markets, property rights, and the rule of law are fundamental to economic growth, and economic growth is fundamental to improving environmental quality. There is a strong correlation between treatment of the environment and standards of living.
2. Property rights make the environment an asset rather than a liability thus giving owners an incentive for stewardship.
3. Markets and the process of exchange give people who have different ideas and values regarding natural resource use a way of cooperating rather than fighting. When cooperation supplants conflict, gains from trade supplant negative-sum games.
Additional Information
