This week our rural, northern California, community took up the topic of utility scale wind turbine facilities on privately owned land. There are many interesting topics associated with this subject, but the one that caught my attention the most had to do with the claims by local land owners (farmers and ranchers) that they have a "right" to do what they want with their lands without government or community interference or regulation. Their hackles raise when the government or local community attempts to place restrictions upon what they can do with their land.
My initial reaction to this proposition was that it may be correct, as long as all of the impacts of whatever they are doing stay within the property boundaries. At first blush, it seems that as long as they are not having any impact on their neighbors and community, then what they do really isn't much concern to others. That obviously includes visual, smell and noise impacts, but has to also include things like generation of dust and the release of chemicals and pesticides into the air or water. As I thought more about what impacts are to be included it became clear that water use (surface or subterranean water) is important, as is energy use if the source of energy comes from outside of the boundaries. Changing flow patterns of surface water can have large impacts for neighbors and the community, so these also are also "beyond the boundary" impacts. Obviously the creation of pollutants such as NOx, CO and CO2 come under the category of things that have impacts beyond the boundaries.
All of these are clearly important, and often have negative impacts on things beyond the boundaries of the property. These impacts all fall into a category that is sometimes referred to as impacting "the commons" because their impact is much greater than just the impacts on the privately held property. They impact others who do not benefit or profit from the actions within the boundaries, but pay the cost of the negative impacts. There is a cost to the impacts on the commons, a cost that is not borne by the landowner. Therefore the "owners" of the commons (all of us) have a stake in what is going on within the boundaries of the property that are creating these costs. It appears that your property rights end when your actions are greater than your boundaries. You do not have a "right" to negatively impact me.
That seems pretty clear to me, and it seems to create the rationale and reason for public regulations of various sorts. Regulations are an attempt to limit the negative impacts to the public to "acceptable" levels (however those are determined).
As I continued to think about this problem, I realized that there is even more to the story. For example, consider the case where a large land area is modified in such a way as to cause future environmental damage within the property boundaries. Huge open cut gold mines come to mind. Assume the miners follow water and air regulations and are so isolated as to not cause noise, sound or vision impacts. What about the ponds of highly toxic water that attract migrating waterfowl? Large numbers of birds die from exposure to the water even though the only thing to cross the boundaries are the birds. This is still a negative impact on the commons (because the birds are a part of the commons), and are therefore of concern to the global community. What about logging operations? These can, and do, negatively impact fish populations, populations wild life, change the biodiversity of the area, change microclimates in the area, etc. and generally have a wide impact to the surrounding commons - even if nothing crosses the property boundaries.
As a final puzzle, what if the actions on the property merely sterilize the land for the foreseeable future. What if it has no impacts other than to make the land useless for future generations? Since nothing negative ever crosses the boundaries, and no wildlife are negatively impacted, should the owner have the "right" to performing this action? I submit that even in that case they do not have that "right." While it may be true that the particular owner is only destroying their own property, the ownership situation is only temporary. That owner will not remain the owner forever. At some point there will be a future owner, or the land may revert to ownership in common. Then the negative impact of destroying the land will be born by others who are not the land owners and who did not profit from the actions of the land owner. So even in that extreme (and very unlikely) situation, the current landowner does not seem to have the "right" to do whatever they want.
This brings me to the interesting question of what does "private" property mean. Is it really "private" or does it actually imply some sort of contract with the rest of the community - where the "owner" has the privileges to certain actions or uses and an obligation for certain actions. It does not appear that ownership grants an unrestricted "right" to do whatever you want, it is rather a privilege granted by the community at large. This privilege extends only so far as the negative impacts to the commons are judged to be "acceptable" by the community. Hence, the community has the right to place restrictions and regulations on actions within the property boundaries. The landowner is more akin to being a steward of their land, but not the ultimate "owner."
It seems that the community as a whole does indeed have the right to tell the landowner what they can or cannot do when there are negative impacts to the commons (which is almost always the case). The reason is that the people being negatively impacted should have the right to determine which impacts are "acceptable." They bare the costs of these impacts with little or no recompense, therefore should be able to determine whether or not the impacts are acceptable. If all of the costs were to the landowners, and none to the commons, there might be an argument for "property rights," but that is never the case. There are always costs that are not paid for by the landowner.
No comments:
Post a Comment