News Release

March 31, 2003

Media Contact: (202) 789-5200

Economics vs. the Environment
New Book Says There Doesn't Have to Be a Choice

It's one thing to be passionate about protecting the environment. It's another to be successful at it. Many laws have been enacted over the past 30 years to clean up air and water pollution and to preserve natural beauty, but many of them don't work well, while others have had unintended consequences.

In Eco-nomics: What Everyone Should Know About Economics and the Environment, free-market environmentalist Rick Stroup explains why many of our environmental laws have failed us and how we might do a better job of protecting nature.

David Simpson, a policy analyst for Resources for the Future, writes, "Readers who are skeptical about `free-market environmentalism' may be surprised to find that Stroup's book, while certainly provocative, is not one-sided, nor does it advocate a wholly laissez-faire approach.... Stroup believes that government's natural role is as an adjudicator of conflicts and compiler of information rather than as a heavy-handed regulator."

Eco-nomics is an indispensable guide for understanding how economic analysis can help protect the environment.