> The problem with the ESA is that it achieves a public good at private cost. The cost is borne by the property owner, effectively without remuneration.

You could say that about any legislation designed to correct a negative externality. The private individual or company goes from avoiding the cost of his activities to paying it. If we just compensated the property owner, society would still be paying the cost, which is what the ESA is trying to correct.

The problem here is that the issue is thrust upon the property owner without any deliberate action. This is unlike (say) industrial pollution, which requires a deliberate action on the polluter's part (although you might argue historical shifts in what is acceptable might also be described as not deliberate).

Perverse incentives abound. If you make your property more welcoming to nature, you risk having it taken from you if you are unlucky enough to make it too welcoming. Degradation is encouraged. You are incentivized to restrict access to your property to prevent unwelcome discovery of endangered species.

A contrary scheme would involve payments for making land more natural, with sliding scales based on the importance. Providing habitat for critically endangered species? You get a large payout. It would encourage expansion of habitat for such species, not destruction.

Of course governments would rather get benefits without having to themselves pay for them. That's actually something to worry about -- if costs are hidden, then the normal cost/benefit calculus that goes into formulating government policies is upset.

Even in the case of industrial pollution, it could be sensible to pay polluters to stop polluting, or at least give them positive financial incentive to do so. Issuing tradeable emission permits to polluters can be viewed as an example of this. Such a scheme was highly effective in reducing SOx emissions in the US, achieving SOx emission reductions 6x more cost effectively than had been projected. Similar incentive programs exist or have existed for farms and automobiles ("Cash for Clunkers").

I’m thinking a good amount about this. Right now I’m of the mind the benefit of weakening ESA is to lower costs and increase speed for _new_ property development. In other words, encroachment on wild lands.

When you say “The cost is borne by the property owner, effectively without remuneration.” I think about the property developer who buys next to the garbage dump and then complains about the smell from the dump. It’s adding undue cost to his housing development.

Where I’m living now there are several older and abandoned manufacturing properties. I believe buying virgin land and building it to your taste is very attractive compared to trying to shoehorn into someone else’s old building—which you might have to demolish at greater cost.

So, no. Right now I don’t think we should fast track the kind of development that needs shortcuts around ESA. Develop somewhere else. Capital investment doesn’t need public help going faster/harder into wild areas.

And if the idea of the cost of demolition and toxic building demolition seems insurmountable, consider the communities whose leaders said they will take the toxic garbage from the LA fires, despite the complaints of the people in those communities. Turns out the naysayers lost to the public good.

I think wild spaces with wild animals are a public good and should be protected. I enjoy those spaces as they are. Anyway, that’s how I feel about it right now.