FREE-MARKET ENVIRONMENTALISM - TURNING A GOOD SERVANT INTO A BAD MASTER

The virtue of internalizing environmental costs so that prices reflect full social opportunity costs at the margin, reaffirmed by Terry Anderson and Donald Leal, is unarguable. Beyond that, however, Anderson and Leal's Free Market Environmentalism neglects the classic works in the intellectual tradition to which it is supposed to be a contribution; is unconvincing and inconsistent in the functions it ascribes to the ''environmental entrepreneur''; conflates problems of distribution and scale with the problem of allocation; ignores international dimensions; and misrepresents the debate over ''sustainable development.''