CEI Praises National Wildlife Federation Report

Washington, D.C., August 20, 2008—A Senior
Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market group critical of
many of the environmental movements’ views on global warming, today endorsed
policy prescriptions in a report from the National Wildlife Federation.

The NWF
report “Increasing
Vulnerability to Hurricanes: Global Warming’s Wake-Up Call for the Gulf and
Atlantic Coasts,” points out that increased coastal populations, diminishing
coastal wetlands, and shrinking wildlife habitat all serve to make hurricane
damage worse.

“While
I’m not convinced that human-caused global warming is the underlying cause,
there can be little doubt that we’re currently moving through a period of heavy
hurricane activity,” said CEI Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer. “When it comes to what
we should do for the coast, the analysis in this report make sense whatever one
thinks about the causes of major hurricanes.”

“Nature
may cause hurricanes,” said Lehrer. “But human activity causes hurricane
damage.”

Lehrer
recommends that policy makers learn from the NWF and work to end explicit and
implicit subsidies for development in sensitive coastal areas, eliminate price
controls that subsidize insurance for the rich, and review the nation’s coastal
infrastructure to make it more hurricane resistant. Lehrer also called for
preservation of more coastal land.

Lehrer,
however, said that he disagrees with calls to restrict all development in
coastal areas. “I do think that rich, stupid people should be allowed to build
on their own property if they want to,” Lehrer said. “But when a hurricane
wipes away an ocean-front mansion, the government should send nothing besides a
rescue boat—and a bill.”

Both
he Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Wildlife Federation are members of Americans for Smart Natural
Catastrophe Policy, a national coalition of groups that support environmentally
responsible, fiscally sound approaches to natural catastrophe policy that
promote public safety. Its website is www.smartnatcat.org.