I've yet to read enough to convince me about global warming, but I support many initiatives to downplay our use of fossil fuels simply because there's more or less an economic consensus, but it gets pretty much zero press, that we're using it too darn fast purely from a economic efficiency standpoint. This is not even taking into account possible environmental effects.
Many many things in economics have a Laffer curve, not just taxes. Efficient use of resources also has a similar hump-backed curve and we're on the far downslope when petroleum usage is concerned.
Part of the problem in the US is the cost of transactions when it comes to pollution. In a perfect economy, a small farmer that has his crops killed by a textile mill would have to be compensated for the damages by the company. If the company's profit it gets from polluting is less than the farmer's damages then they cut back production until there's an equilibrium.
However given the legal costs and barriers setup by crooked local, state and federal officials things like this rarely happen. Plus in the US we have the rather complicated issue that no one really owns waterways. They are all a public property more or less.
A river may run through your property, but you do not own it, thus there are less legal grounds to sue on, unlike in Brittan where waterways are allowed to be owned by individuals and companies.
This spawned from the earlier days of the country when land usage was as big an issue, because there was more land than people used. Occurrences such as these are often referred to as the “Tragedy of the Commons'
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2003-04-07 06:43 (UTC)Many many things in economics have a Laffer curve, not just taxes. Efficient use of resources also has a similar hump-backed curve and we're on the far downslope when petroleum usage is concerned.
Part of the problem in the US is the cost of transactions when it comes to pollution. In a perfect economy, a small farmer that has his crops killed by a textile mill would have to be compensated for the damages by the company. If the company's profit it gets from polluting is less than the farmer's damages then they cut back production until there's an equilibrium.
However given the legal costs and barriers setup by crooked local, state and federal officials things like this rarely happen. Plus in the US we have the rather complicated issue that no one really owns waterways. They are all a public property more or less.
A river may run through your property, but you do not own it, thus there are less legal grounds to sue on, unlike in Brittan where waterways are allowed to be owned by individuals and companies.
This spawned from the earlier days of the country when land usage was as big an issue, because there was more land than people used. Occurrences such as these are often referred to as the “Tragedy of the Commons'