Calculation and Environmental Policy: Lessons from Human Action

Calculation and Environmental Policy: Lessons from Human Action

Timothy Terrell at the Human Action Conference, 2024

05/18/2024 Timothy D. Terrell

“In writing Human Action, Mises did not devote much space to a direct discussion of environmental policy. But, as I went through the book with an eye toward material related to environmental issues, I saw some comments from Mises that show that his advances in economic calculation, his thoughts on conservation, his understanding of the function of private property, and his remarks on interest group politics are all applicable to today’s debates on environmental policy.”

Presented at the 2024 Human Action Conference on Saturday, 18 May 2024, at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.