1995 will be the silver anniversary of Earth Day. This will be a significant event, for it marks a full generation since we formally recognized our environment's fragility and value. To celebrate the anniversary, I suggest that we begin a campaign to buy Siberia. This would be America's Earth Day present to the world. Buying Siberia was suggested by Walter Mead, a researcher who has traveled in the region and noted the vast scale of environmental destruction caused by insensitive development of natural resources.

Earth Day celebrations usually blend pantheism and pontification. There is much blame-fixing, but little careful analysis of the causes of environmental problems. On Earth Day, many greens are carried away by their enthusiasm and identify corporate greed and individualism as our problems. If everyone could purge greed from their hearts, become informed, and commune with earth spirits, all might be well.

My approach is quite different. I focus on the critical shortage - lack of good institutional arrangements. If we buy Siberia we can replace its existing institutions, legacies of socialism and corruption, with institutions that harmonize environmental responsibility and economic progress. Like Yellowstone Park, the world's first national park, this can be America's environmental gift to the world.

Just as the United States bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, so we could buy Siberia in 1995. We know enough to avoid past mistakes. After the U.S. bought Alaska it made the mistakes common throughout the American West; it gave government bureaucracies and perverse laws control over the land. The results are clear. The Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Land Management, and the Mining Law of 1872 fostered abuse of the West's land, water and wildlife.

Today, the Forest Service subsidizes destructive logging in the Rocky Mountain states, Park Service mismanagement turns Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Parks into overgrazed, simplified ecosystems, the Bureau of Reclamation supports dams that lose money and destroy salmon runs, and the Mining Law of 1872 continues the primacy of mining over other values.

Siberia resembles the American West of a century ago - a sparsely inhabited, resource-rich frontier. Siberia's 3.5 million-plus square miles are home to fewer than 15 million people and contain enormous reserves of oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds and timber. Siberia also houses environmental treasures such as Lake Baikal, the deepest lake in the world and an ancient ecosystem; diverse taiga forests of cedar, fir, pine and spruce; endangered species like the Siberian tiger, and dozens of free-flowing rivers.

Like the American West of the 1800s, Siberia's environment is threatened by reckless economic development. Lake Baikal and the Angara River are dying from pollution, soil erosion is destroying agricultural land, air pollution is poisoning the people, and toxic mining wastes are simply dumped.

Russia lacks the technology, expertise and will to protect environmental values. Poverty and hardship encourage extensive logging, mining and drilling with little thought for the long-term consequences. With many resources located in fragile environments, irresponsible development would be disastrous.

Recognizing the threat, some environmentalists advocate creating a huge Siberian wilderness area, off-limits to development. Such proposals reflect self-delusion and intellectual naivete. Surging world demand for natural resources and Russians' desire for development make resource development inevitable. The only questions are: at what environmental costs and for whose benefit?

Since we could not halt development even if we wanted to, sincere environmentalists have to foster institutions that will ensure ecologically friendly development. Federal management has failed miserably on the public lands of the United States. Responsible management by the nonprofit and for-profit sectors provides the path to responsible greenness. This requires institutions that provide incentives to consider ecology and community as well as economic values.

I recommend we create a public, quasi-governmental corporation to purchase Siberia from Russia. The federal government could legitimize the enterprise and perhaps guarantee the bonds used to raise the cash. After an ecological inventory, the corporation would sell some land (with environmental easements and covenants) to companies and private individuals. The rest would be held as a public resource by environmental trusts modeled after the Nature Conservancy, but not managed by politicians or government bureaucrats.

Development would be limited in environmentally sensitive areas. There would be no subsidies for economic development or extractive activities. For example, mining rights would not be subsidized as they currently are in the United States by the Mining Law of 1872. Restoration bonds would hold polluters responsible for any environmental damage they cause. This is necessary to constrain industrial emissions and dumps. Development could be prohibited in irreplaceable environmental areas, places like Lake Baikal, an ecological analog to Yellowstone Park.

At the same time, environmentally sensitive development efforts would be encouraged, with the developers liable for any damages they cause. This requires clear and enforceable property rights. Finally, land use would be taxed at rates reflecting its actual use, rather than its most financially valuable potential use. This would eliminate the pressures to develop land in order to meet tax obligations.

By creating legally enforceable incentives for nongovernmental landowners to responsibly develop Siberian resources we create a situation in which many good things go together: economic progress for local populations, resources for the world, but most important, development with environmental sensitivity. This example could be an Earth Day present for the world.