Terry L. Anderson

Terry L. Anderson is director of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) and a senior fellow at the rightwing Hoover Institution. 

Anderson landed in the consciousness of environmentalists in 1999 as lead author of an alarming policy paper published by the Cato Institute, "How and Why to Privatize Federal Lands".

The paper, in which public ownership was painted "red" by being identified as a "failure of socialism", was based on four assumptions: That a given piece of land be "allocated to highest-valued use", that transition costs (to private ownership) be kept to a minimum, that there be "broad participation" in the divestiture, and that "squatter's rights" be protected. The plan advanced was to allocate to each citizen "shares" in what are now public lands. But shares would be "freely transferred", i.e., sold on the open market.

With 280 million citizens, what would an individual's shares be worth? $5,000? $50,000? Whatever the value on the open market, the poorer a citizen, the greater the inducement to sell quickly. But even the middle classes, bombarded with college tuition, mortgages, medical bills and the like, in time would be needing the cash their "shares" represented. In the wings, corporations and the very rich would be waiting to vacuum shares up. Within a generation or two what is now the priceless heritage of all U.S. citizens would gravitate into the ownership of the wealthy.

Anderson became George W. Bush's adviser on public lands issues. In May of 1999, as reported by Mark Hertsgaard in The NationAnderson was one of a group that met with Bush at the Texas Governor's mansion.

Bush was advised, as Anderson explained, to "devolve some responsibility for meeting environmental standards to local levels". Bush was also advised at that time to give private property rights precedence over public interests and to replace governmental law and regulation with the laissez-faire principles of the free market - exactly what the privatization lobby has worked toward lo these past four decades. 

Anderson has also endorsed the privatization of Indian reservations. "When you drive around Indian country, you can just tell which pieces of land are privately owned and which ones are held in trust ... The private lands are the ones that you can see being put to productive use," Anderson told the National Review. 

Books

 * Terry L. Anderson & Bruce Yandle (eds), Agriculture and the Environment- Searching for Greener Pastures, Stanford, California, Hoover Institution Press, 2001.
 * Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Free Market Environmentalism, New York, NY, Palgrave, 2001. (The original 1991 edition was published by Westview Press).
 * Terry L. Anderson and Henry I. Miller (eds), The Greening of U.S. Foreign Policy,Stanford, California, Hoover Institution Press, 2000.
 * Terry L. Anderson (ed), Political Environmentalism: Going Behind the Green Curtain, Stanford, California, Hoover Institution Press, 2000.
 * Terry L. Anderson and Alexander James (eds), The Politics and Economics of Park Management, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001.
 * Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Enviro-Capitalists, Doing Good While Doing Well, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997.
 * Terry L. Anderson and Pamela S. Snyder, Water Markets: Priming the Invisible Pump, Washington D.C., Cato, 1997.
 * Terry L. Anderson (ed), Breaking the Environmental Policy Gridlock, Stanford, California, Hoover Institution Press, 1997.
 * Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill (eds), Water Marketing--The Next Generation, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1997.
 * Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill (eds), Privatization Process: A Worldwide Perspective, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996.
 * Terry L. Anderson, Sovereign Nations or Reservations? An Economic History of American Indians, San Francisco, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1995.
 * Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill (eds), Wildlife in the Marketplace Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1995.

According to a biographical note Anderson has a forthcoming book with P. J. Hill, The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier Stanford University Press, and is "currently editing a volume entitled You Have to Admit It's Getting Better-the Environment, That Is, Hoover Institution Press, building on Bjorn Lomborg's controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist," it states.