What would happen if the World Wildlife Foundation was allowed to purchase land, and then never have to pay taxes on it?

Then people or groups of people could buy large swaths of land just to preserve it against development.

Want to ensure it's never developed? Tax developed land, only.

I grew up next to the Adirondack State Park in NY. There's no development there - unless you know a well connected politician who makes an exception JUST FOR YOU, so you can build a house on a pristine lake, or a dam for necessary (and profitable!) water projects, etc. Just 7 years ago, NYC was trying to force my hometown to let OMNI dump NYC's garbage in my hometown about 2 miles from the Adirondack State Park.

People aren corportations can be corrupt, but the government is king of corruption.

I'd have some tiny amount of respect for "Libertarians" like Paul if they'd just acknowledge what their philosophy actually allows them to acknowledge: That most issues under the environment category, ecosystems and the effects of pollution in particular, are (in the Libby lingo) "externalities", which one cannot expect the market to manage properly without some kind of external collective action.

The idea of a free market that functions smoothly on its own is only practical in theory as is communism. The problem is that the corporations that are the engines of the market are run by people who don't necessarily make rational decisions. Case in point, a current argument as to why women don't make as much as men in the workplace is that women aren't as aggressive as men in demanding higher salaries. If that were true and a free market really worked, every corporation would be hiring equally qualified women as executives since they cost less.

Another problem with the free market idea is that time and time again, business has shown its desire to not compete rather than compete and win. Our current market shows that a major business in any industry would rather remove their competitors rather than compete with them. That is what mergers are all about.

And lets not forget the impact the stock market has on the free market. You have a company, its not doing to well at the moment, but you need to please your investors, what are you going to do? Compete harder or fire 10% of your staff to make your P&L statements look more attractive to wall street? The stock market inherently cripples the free market because now companies have two different sets of customers and they can't please both.

Time and time again companies have shown their willingness to harm or kill their customers. Now how is that 'free market'? With out severe governmental oversight to protect individual consumers from the power of multi-national billion or trillion dollar behemoths, we don't stand a chance.

In its ultimate expression of the free market there would be one company and we'd all be slaves, and I bet you every major ceo jerks off thinking about that.

I do agree the market can help with the environment, I firmly believe it would only be when they are forced to. If left to their own devices by the time the market realized something needed to be done, it'd be too late.

I think that we have immense communication now and that if an agency was eliminated at the Federal level it would give an opportunity for the states to implement a similar program without all the crap.

What an opportunity it would be to rid ourselves of the inefficiencies of enormous bureaucracies.

If you think that the people of Alaska or Any Other State is going to allow Drilling For Oil in their established National Parks when they were returned to the states => You Are Crazy !!!

If The Power Is At The State Level And The Federal Government Is Limited; Eco People could have a hey day instead of fighting Lobbyists and Big Money in Washington.

You can always detect a radical libertarian by his dismissal of the evidence for climate change:

"If you study the history, we've had a lot of climate changes. We've had hot spells and cold spells. They come and go"

Notice that although libertarians write vast, complex treatises based on economics, math, and logic, they're pretty weak when it comes to hard sciences. For all their pretenses at rationalism and science, a lot of libs are gibbering flat-earth nutbars who deny basic scientific fact, because it is inconvenient to their politics.

If climate change is real, then, (gasp) it might mean a carbon tax, or some intervention in the free market, (sob). God forbid someone from the government would make me get my fat ass out of the SUV and onto the subway. Therefore climate change MUST be untrue! Because if it's true then the libertarian philosophy will be as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

Unfortunately the planet doesn't give a crap about libertarian ideas. Either we choose to succeed by regulating human behavior to the necessary degree, or we choose to fail.

First the Republicans stack the courts and then they throw a Libertarian who recommends legal challenges to solve all our social and environmental problems? Gee I'm sorry you're going to have to breath filthy air for the rest of your days because the court ruled against you. The courts? THE COURTS? The Supreme Court threw out habeas corpus for property owners, EMINENT DOMAIN, the right of government to confiscate your property and transfer ownership to another private interest!!??

Ron Paul is a madman, thanks for showing us the light.

When all forms of physical trespass, be that smoke, particulate matter, etc., are legally recognized for what they are -- a physical trespass upon the property and rights of another -- concerns about difficulty in suing the offending party will be largely diminished. When any such cases are known to be slam-dunk wins for the person whose property is being polluted, those doing the polluting will no longer persist in doing so. Against a backdrop of property rights actually enforced, contingency and class-action cases are additional legal mechanisms that resolve this concern.

Since every car except electric pollutes, I supose that now every resident of every city and town could launch a legal action against every owner of a car. A judge would then decide what damages the city residends have suffered and force the car owners to pay up, based on the amount of miles driven by each car owner. Not to mention that some cars pollute more than others. And some people suffer more from polllution than others. Some even die from it so we could have wrongfull death suits against car owners. No doubt something simlar would be devised for every factory with a smokestack.

Libertarians sure know how to come up with simple solutions!