Article 9. Government shall make no law which prescribes the means by which owners or managers must achieve compliance with governmentally established environmental regulations. The right of an owner or manager to achieve compliance by the most economical means shall not be abridged.

Early in the 18th century, however, British courts reversed this traditional common law. These rulings permitted newly developing industries to dump waste into rivers. The courts held that the "needs of industry" to dispose of wastes superseded the rights of property owners along the river.

This bad precedent was inherited by the United States when we declared our independence. Until quite recently, it was considered acceptable to dump wastes into rivers or the air. This simply transferred the problem to people downstream or downwind. The person who ended up paying the cost of cleanup gained no benefit from the activity which produced the waste. Here was a clear-cut case of government failing to protect individual rights, by allowing some people to transfer their costs to others.

We now recognize that simply dumping waste into a river, or dispersing it in the air, doesn't get rid of it. We now recognize that pollution must be stopped at the source. Unfortunately, this recognition has been accompanied by a command and control approach to eliminating pollution. Government officials not only prescribe emissions limits, but prescribe the means by which pollution must be controlled. A recent example is a law requiring electric power plants in the Midwest to install scrubbers which removed a specific percentage of the sulfur from the exhaust. In reality, a cheaper way to reduce sulfur emissions would have been for the power plants to burn low-sulfur Western coal. The scrubber requirement was imposed to protect the jobs of Eastern coal miners, who produce high-sulfur coal. One unfortunate result was that the power plant exhaust, even after scrubbing, contained more sulfur than would the unscrubbed exhaust from low-sulfur coal.

The command and control approach is a violation of the property rights of business owners. Government has an obligation to protect the rights of citizens by setting standards for maximum allowable levels of emissions. The pollution emitters, however, equally have the right to meet those standards by means best suited to their particular circumstances.

What about responsibilities?

It may be asked, don't people in business have responsibilities that accompany their rights? Of course! Just as people retain all their rights as citizens when they enter business, they retain all their responsibilities. This includes responsibilities to employees, customers, stockholders, neighbors, and the environment.