Todd Myers wants a cleaner environment but thinks too much of the environmental movement is about feeling good rather than actually making the Earth a cleaner place.

“Trendy environmentalism is taking us off-track,” Myers told an audience in Santa Fe on Tuesday (Feb. 28). Myers, who works for the Washington Policy Center in Seattle, has written a book called “Eco-Fads,” in which he criticizes the “green” movement for appealing too much to people’s emotions and self-satisfaction instead of finding practical solutions.

“We all care about the environment,” Myers told Capitol Report New Mexico after giving a 45-minute presentation that was sponsored by the Rio Grande Foundation, “the question is, how do you make the environment better? Things that really work — following the science, following the economics, and then respect other values like personal freedom and prosperity and things like that.” (Full disclosure: The Rio Grand Foundation funds Capitol Report New Mexico.)

An example of that, Myers says, is the attention paid by politicians and community activists to creating building standards for new public schools and facilities that tout their “green” technology when, in fact, they don’t deliver on those promises despite their higher costs.

Here in New Mexico, Myers pointed to the “clean energy benchmarks” that the Amy Biehl Community School in Santa Fe was not able to meet:

Then there was the US Conference of Mayors back in 2005, that saw politicians from all over the country signing its Climate Protection Agreement, vowing that their cities would meet the Kyoto Climate Agreement that Congress failed to pass. The mayors who signed on to the agreement — which included those in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Las Cruces and seven other New Mexico towns — pledged to get greenhouse gas emissions to a level 7 percent lower than those of 1990 by 2012. But by 2009, Myers said, New Mexico was 9 percent above 1990 levels.

“Politicians know how to get elected,” Myers said. “They’re going to err on the side that makes them look the best.”

Myers says efforts to make for a cleaner environment should incorporate the power of the free-market.

“Government isn’t designed for innovation,” Myers said. “If it’s not economically sustainable, it’s not environmentally sustainable.” And Myers points to the development of hybird technology in cars as an example.

“The hybrids were created in the 90′s by Toyota and Honda who wanted to sell to people who wanted fuel-efficient vehicles, vehicles that didn’t put out so much CO2 and they found a market. And this was long before government subsidies came along.”

But what about environmentalists who, when they hear the words “free market,” immediately recoil? And what’s wrong with government offering incentives to environmentally-friendly companies and products?

We asked Myers those questions — a number of others — in this interview.

Here it is. It runs just under six and a half minutes:

 

By the way, here’s the link to Myers’ book, Eco-Fads.

And here’s a review it received from the conservative magazine, the National Review. And one from Forbes. And here’s a column Myers wrote in his hometown paper, the Seattle Times, that generated 102 comments in just 72 hours.

And for laughs, here’s a clip from “South Park” that dramatizes what Myers says about feeling good about being green: