Ron Paul

All over campus I’ve seen students tabling in support of Republican candidate Ron Paul. I don’t have a problem with it, but I don’t think the students fully understand Paul’s political platform.

Throughout Ron Paul’s campaign he’s been consistent, honest, and really quite normal and genuine. There is no wonder as to why university students like Paul; he supports legalizing marijuana, and he’s against war. All sound good to me.

However I think there are major flaws in his arguments regarding energy and the environment. (Well, and a few other things).

First of all, Ron Paul would like to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and settle pollution control by property owners in private courts. I greatly feel as though a central governing body on environmental issues such as the EPA is vital to the nation’s health and safety. Also, reverting back to common law will create even more chaos. In Madison v. Ducktown (two private entities), which involved a private nuisance case against a smelting copper plant, the courts ruled in favor of Ducktown because the economic value of the corporation outweighed the economic value of the land that was destroyed from the smelting. Fast-forward to today, imagine the aggregate amount of environmental and private property damage that could result.

Paul said, “The freer the market is and the more respect you have for private property, the better the environment is protected.” I disagree with this quote. There needs to be some type of regulation to protect drinking water, hazardous waste, or air pollution. Especially for something like air and water, which travels beyond state lines.

Paul doesn’t quite agree with scientists who say that man contributed factors add to climate change and global warming and opposed the Kyoto Protocol to lower green house gas emissions.

Also in 2009 Paul said, "Can't help the economy. It has to hurt the economy and it can't possibly help the environment because they're totally off-track on that. It might turn out to be one of the biggest hoaxes of all history, this whole global warming terrorism that they've been using, but we'll have to just wait and see, but it cannot be helpful, it's going to hurt everybody"

I completely disagree with this. I feel environmental protection protects both the environment and commerce. An example of this is hybrid cars. People choose hybrid cars because it emits less CO2 and lowers the dependency on oil (costs). And when Paul says, “it’s going to hurt everybody,” it kind of shocks me. How can protecting the environment “hurt everybody?” Really!

So please, before voting for any candidate, do your homework.