Authored by Mani Basharzad via The Foundation for Economic Education,
A public company in the UK was building a high-speed railway when it suddenly faced a regulation that few could have predicted: a £100 million ($132 million) bat tunnel.
The railway passed through Sheephouse Wood, an area inhabited by rare Bechstein’s bats. To comply with environmental regulations that protect the bats from colliding with high-speed trains, the company had to build a roughly one-kilometer covered structure alongside the railway. This structure has since become widely known in the UK as the “bat tunnel.”
If you think this is just one case, let me tell you about the fish disco.
EDF Energy was developing a new nuclear power station in Somerset, which draws cooling water from the Severn Estuary. The project faced regulatory requirements to reduce the number of fish being drawn into and killed by its cooling-water intake pipes. EDF agreed to three measures: specially designed low-velocity intake heads, a fish recovery-and-return system, and an acoustic fish deterrent—underwater speakers that make noise to steer fish away, nicknamed the “fish disco.” The acoustic deterrent alone reportedly costs about $66 million, while EDF says the full fish-protection package costs more than $926 million.
The problem with the UK is that it has become a vetocracy.
Francis Fukuyama, the famous author of “The End of History,” explored this problem in his often-overlooked book “ Political Order and Political Decay.” The concept helps explain part of the productivity puzzle in the Western w
