Experts on energy and environmental policy gathered at the Hoover Institution on May 12, 2026, concluding that technological improvements and entrepreneurship can significantly enhance market-based approaches to conservation and environmental quality. The conference, part of Hoover's Markets vs. Mandates research program, explored how trade policies, local control, and innovative business models can outperform federal mandates in addressing environmental challenges. Senior Fellow Terry L. Anderson urged attendees to think about environmental issues through the lens of tradeoffs rather than solutions, channeling fellow Hoover scholar Thomas Sowell's philosophy.
The conference revealed that current trade policies actively accelerate climate change by protecting dirty industries while creating high barriers for clean ones. Economist Joseph Shapiro of UC-Berkeley found that a global trade agreement could reduce emissions by 61 percent. State and local governments often prove more effective at environmental protection than federal mandates, with research showing that major environmental problems were moving in the right direction before federal intervention—dissolved oxygen deficits and unfishable fresh water declined rapidly prior to the Clean Water Act of 1972. Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center highlighted the Quinault Nation's forest management success rate of 50 percent, compared to just 20 percent when the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs managed the same Washington Pacific coast land. Dominic Parker's research on America's 1900 ban on commercial wildlife trade revealed that deer populations now rival pre-colonial levels, leading to 2 million accidents, 30,000 injuries, and 200 deaths per year from collisions.
According to Anderson, the key is to "think 'there are no solutions, but there are lots of tradeoffs'" when considering environmental issues. The conference featured three participants in Hoover's Enviropreneur Fellowship Program who are using technology to lower barriers to conservation: Maiky Iberkelid's Resilift works to reduce costs of raising structures in flood-prone areas using sensors, Grant Canary's Mast removes fire-killed trees and stores them underground to prevent carbon emissions, and Manuel Pinuela's Cultivo helps ranchers restore grasslands while earning carbon credits. Niraj Swami of the Nature Conservancy emphasized that technology can lower transaction costs and provide new pathways to measure and monitor environmental conditions, opening opportunities for voluntary agreements to solve problems that mandates struggle to address. Senior Fellow John Cochrane noted that while moving steel production and rare-earth refining overseas benefited US environmental quality, these industries would pollute less under American environmental standards.
The conference highlighted several market-based solutions that could reshape environmental policy. Parker's research suggests that rescinding the venison sales ban or reintroducing wolves in suitable US habitats could save the economy $6.5 billion annually in lost productivity from deer-related accidents. On data centers—a growing concern as AI expands—Hoover policy fellow David Fedor noted that better coordination with utilities could ease pressure on power grids, since demand only reaches supply limits for about 30 hours per year in most jurisdictions. The final session saw Hoover fellows Steven E. Koonin and Matthew Kahn discuss how data and insurance market changes will help homeowners either relocate to safer areas or develop mitigations where they currently live, as past greenhouse gas restrictions have failed to slow climate change. The bottom line: entrepreneurship and technology are creating practical, market-driven alternatives to top-down environmental mandates.