{"id":14305,"date":"2016-09-26T07:33:40","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T13:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=14305"},"modified":"2016-09-26T07:33:40","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T13:33:40","slug":"montana-ethic-project-toward-free-market-environmentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/09\/montana-ethic-project-toward-free-market-environmentalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Ethic Project: Toward free market environmentalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Free<\/a>

Joey and Libby Early<\/p>

Terry Anderson, director of the Property & Environment Research Center, talks about free market environmentalism.<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the 30th chapter of the 32-part video series \u201cThe Montana Ethic Project.\u201d This chapter features Terry Anderson, former executive director of the Property & Environment Research Center, talking about free market environmentalism. You\u00a0can watch the whole video below. Here is an edited transcript of how it begins:<\/p>\n

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“I grew up in Bridger, Montana, a little town south of Billings, where my passion was hunting, fishing,\u00a0hiking, and skiing up at Red Lodge Mountain at the time. I used to spend a good deal around Cooke City\u00a0when it wasn\u2019t wilderness area with my dad in an old Willy\u2019s jeep, driving in to the lakes to fish when the\u00a0snow would melt off in the early summer.<\/p>\n

“I think it was those experiences that gave me my love of the environment, and love of what all of wholive in Montana care so much about: Big Sky Country.”<\/p>\n

Here is another, edited excerpt from Anderson’s presentation<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“Today people from all kinds of environmental groups are using\u00a0markets. Everyone knows about The Nature Conservancy, a great organization. Here in Montana we\u00a0have the Montana Land Trust, just a perfect example of people using private property rights and\u00a0markets to preserve agriculture and our agricultural heritage.<\/p>\n

“That concept though, to a lot of Montanans, doesn\u2019t sit very well. The notion that we should have to pay\u00a0for the environment is almost antithetical to the way people in Montana think. And I think, therein, is an\u00a0important part of what I think has to change in the psyche of Montanans. I grew up, as I said, in a little\u00a0town where I could take my shotgun when I was 12\u00a0years old and walk out the front door and in a\u00a0few hundred yards be hunting. I knew everybody. My dad knew the landowners. I knew them. I knew\u00a0you didn\u2019t go hunt on old lady Jones\u2019s place or she\u2019d kick you off. I knew that if I hunted the land I had to\u00a0take care of it.<\/p>\n

“But we\u2019ve seen big changes since the days when I was 12. And those changes\u00a0brought a lot of pressures on our resources. Not just pressures to mine, not just pressures to cut trees or\u00a0to grow crops. But pressures from those of us who compete to get to the Yellowstone Park campground\u00a0first in July, those of us who compete to get to the best fishing streams or best hunting grounds, those\u00a0of us who compete for the best camping sites in the wilderness. All these are examples of changes that\u00a0put pressure on our Big Sky, on our resources that create the amenities that we all know and love.”<\/p>\n