Since our founding in 1984, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has sought to reform and reduce environmental regulation of land, shrink the federal estate, and unlock federal lands for private ownership.
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The vital role of private conservation: A different perspective on Earth Day
Amidst the jubilation over government-led environmental initiatives on yet another Earth Day yesterday, it’s crucial to highlight a perspective too often overlooked: private conservation, rather…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: Trademark fees and threatened sloths
A cargo ship struck and collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. The psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman died at age 90.
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One way for government to improve air quality: Remove obstacles to prescribed fires
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final rule on particulate matter prematurely makes the primary annual standard for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) much…
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Earth Report 2000
Earth Report 2000: Revisiting the True State of the Planet Date: 1999 Edited by: Ronald Bailey Published by: McGraw-Hill Earth Report 2000 is a…
News Release
Public Interest Groups File Deceptive Advertising Complaint Against Ben And Jerry’s
Washington, DC, December 16, 1999 – Citizens for the Integrity of Science and the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a complaint with the Federal Trade…
News Release
Al Gore’s Statistical Hocus Pocus On Urban Sprawl: Gobbling Up Numbers, Not Open Space
Washington, DC, December 9, 1999 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute charged that Vice President Al Gore’s claim earlier this week of an alarmingly increased…
News Release
ER Physicians: “FDA is Too Slow”
WASHINGTON, DC, October 29, 1999—A new nationwide poll of emergency room physicians sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) finds that delays in FDA…
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ER Physicians: “FDA is Too Slow”
WASHINGTON, DC, October 29, 1999—A new nationwide poll of emergency room physicians sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) finds that delays in FDA…
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Cows or Buffaloes?
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Lessons From Cypress Bay
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Forest Fires Rage as Government Fiddles: Bob Nelson Op-Ed in LA Times
Published in the Los Angeles Times Published in the Los Angeles Times October 17, 1999 COLLEGE PARK, MD —…
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Feds Prepare to Gobble Up Land
Op-Eds
Urban Growth Boundaries Not so Smart for Growth (Letter to the Editor)
The Aug. 30 District Forum on revitalizing regional smart growth argued that “the challenges of growth can only be met successfully at the regional level.”…
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Anti-“Sprawl” Policy: Congested Thinking and Dense Logic
“Urban sprawl” has morphed into a catchall phrase that describes the cause and consequence of any social deviation related to the suburbs, including, and…
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Dumb and Dumber: Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Patients’ Bill of Rights
This week, the Senate considers legislation to impose a lengthy laundry list of new federal regulations and accompanying costs on employer-insured health plans. The…
News Release
Institute Opposes “Patients’ Bill of ‘Wrongs'”
Washington, D.C., July 13, 1999 – This week the United States Senate is considering the “Patients’ Bill of Rights,” an amalgam of various mandates…
Op-Eds
Michigan by the Sea: Bob Nelson Article in Weekly Standard
Michigan by the Sea Published in The Weekly Standard July5/July 12, 1999 issue In the 1980s and ’90s,…
News Release
David Riggs Joins CEI
Washington, D.C., June 8, 1999 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is pleased to welcome economist and policy analyst David Riggs to its environment…
News Release
Fact And Fiction On “Smart Growth” & “Urban Sprawl”
Vice President Al Gore and environmental activists argue that suburban development, pejoratively called “urban sprawl,” is destroying the environment. Loss of farmland and open…
News Release
Earth Day Is A Time To Remember The Proud History Of Private Stewardship, Says Conservation Group
April 22 should be a time of reflection on the great efforts by the thousands of people who work diligently to preserve some small…
News Release
Media Advisory: Earth Day Experts
Most Americans want a clean environment. That is no surprise. What surprises traditional environmental activists is that most people don’t support extensive federal regulation.
News Release
Pro-Environment, Not Pro-EPA: Americans want environmental protection, but not more federal regulation
America’s support for strong environmental protection does not translate into strong support for heavy-handed federal regulation. CEI’s just released National Environmental Survey demonstrates that…
News Release
Pro-Environment, Not Pro-EPA: Americans want environmental protection, but not more federal regulation
America’s support for strong environmental protection does not translate into strong support for heavy-handed federal regulation. CEI’s just released National Environmental Survey demonstrates that…
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Culling To Be Kind: Why This Year’s Ivory Sales Will Help Elephant Conservation
View Full Document as PDF This month, nearly 34 tons of elephant ivory from Namibia and Zimbabwe will be shipped to…
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Saving Fisheries without Property Rights: “Surgery with a Baseball Bat”
View Full Document as PDF The collapse of the once-rich fisheries off the coast of New England is testimony to the…
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Smart Growth Stupidity
For years, redevelopment has been pushing Austin’s low-income Latinos eastwards. A couple decades ago, the culprit was a highway: IH35, a road that runs…
Op-Eds
Only The Forest Service Can Prevent Forests
Remember,” Smokey Bear likes to remind careless campers, “only you can prevent forest fires.” Only you – and the U.S. Forest Service, which has been…
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FDA Modernization After One Year: Drug Approval is Still Too Slow
The Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997—signed into law one year ago this Wednesday—is under attack. Spurred by the withdrawal of…
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Regulatory Sprawl: Who Should Decide Where We Live?
View Full Document as PDF On September 9, the Sierra Club released a distraught report on urban sprawl, blaming the spread…
News Release
Clinical Drug Testing: Will Reform Equal Delay?
Washington, DC, June 11, 1998 — Reports released today by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) vastly overstate the need for new…
News Release
Clinical Drug Testing: Will Reform Equal Delay?
Washington, DC, June 11, 1998 — Reports released today by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) vastly overstate the need for new…
News Release
Clinton-Gore Ocean Photo-Op Goes Overboard
Washington, DC, June 11, 1998 — A Clinton Administration ocean conference now under way is a misguided effort to generate controversy and justify unwarranted…
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Urban Sustainability
The grand cliché of environmental policy, "sustainable development," has migrated into urban affairs, where the native politicians and bureaucrats have made it their own.
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ATF Documents Reveal Ban on Protected Speech
We have previously reported on CEI’s pending lawsuit with the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) challenging the constitutionality of the agency’s ban…
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Taking Private Land for Private Interests: The Agenda and Policies of the American Farmland Trust
Full Document Available in…
News Release
Food Fight! Federal Organic Labeling – One Big Unadulterated Mistake
Washington, D.C., May 1, 1998 — “A government attempt to define organic food is no different than a government attempt to regulate religious doctrine…
News Release
Food Fight! Federal Organic Labeling – One Big Unadulterated Mistake
Washington, D.C., May 1, 1998 — “A government attempt to define organic food is no different than a government attempt to regulate religious doctrine…
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The Mother of All Food Fights
Someone once commented that, if the federal government regulated restaurant fare, there’d be blood in the streets. Vegetarians would be fighting with meat-eaters, Jews…
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The Promise of Private Conservation
Private individuals, groups, and associations provided conservation amenities long before the birth of the environmental movement, but today these efforts are often subsumed by…
News Release
Enlightened Green Alternative To Earth Day Blues
Washington, DC, April 17, 1998 —Saving the planet is a nice idea, but the focus on Earth Day has for too long been on…
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Conservation Through Commerce
Full Document Available in PDF To many people the words “conservation” and “commerce” are anathema. And…
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Flush With Anger: Should Washington Regulate Toilets?
One of Congress’ dumbest ideas was having federal bureaucrats redesign household appliances. Under the 1992 Energy Policy Act, several plumbing fixtures must now meet…
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How Green Was Common Law?
On December 17, the Center for Private Conservation hosted a roundtable on the Common Law Approach to Pollution Prevention to assess the extent…
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Told Ya’ So: The Trojan Pony’s Revenge
On March 16, the General Accounting Office reported that people who exercised their rights under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996…
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Fishing For Solutions
While dramatic stories of thedepletion of the world’s fish stocks frequently grab the spotlight in the popular press, reports of the death of fishing…
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Conservation Easements & Private Land Stewardship
Full Document Available in PDF “Conservation easements” are property rights created to…
News Release
Institute Attacks Whitman Call For State Control of Open Space
Washington, DC, January 21, 1998 — The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) blasted Governor Christie Todd Whitman’s (R-NJ) plan to lock up one million acres…
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Who’ll “Manage” Managed Care?
Public anxieties over the quality and limitations of managed health care are fueling a new round of federal proposals to regulate the medical marketplace. The…
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Farmland Everywhere
To just about anyone who has driven non-stop from St. Louis to Denver it is practically inconceivable that American is running out of farmland. Yet…
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Schell’s Game in Seattle
In November, Seattle voters elected Paul Schell mayor. Few were surprised. Schell was the anointed candidate, the establishment favorite. Populist challenger Charlie Chong, by contrast,…
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Privatizing The Inner City
Suburbanites have long benefited from the control over their immediate surrounding environment that they get from the system of land use controls in their areas.
News Release
International Land Designations Threaten Sovereignty, Usurp Powers Of Congress
WASHINGTON, DC June 3, 1997 – A proliferation of international treaties aimed at protecting the “global environment” are involving the United Nations increasingly in…
Study
The Wood Duck
The wood duck has long occupied a special place in the hearts of waterfowl fanciers, hunters, bird watchers, and others because of the male’s striking…
