Environmentalism - The Good
Wit and Wisdom has a pretty good post on Prince Charles and his ‘War on Climate Change’.
Whilst I disagree with a small part of the post, the main thrust is how I think we should approach environmental challenges (and combined with the party’s Green Taxes it makes even more sense).
The main thrust is that we shouldn’t be promoting hair shirts, but we should be promoting the advantages.
So, conserve energy and we save money. Use less oil and we save money and resources. Recycle and we save money and resources.
I’d add that we should be paying people to sort out their rubbish for recycling. That way we can tell if something is worth recycling (ie do its benefits outweigh its costs) and the only way to do this calculation is through the price mechanism.
For more subjective things, like seasonal produce being more interesting - that is not for the government to say, it is purely subjective, but non-governmental organisations can promote that if they wish. Not everyone will agree, but you can promote the idea and probably convert more people to the cause.
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February 14th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
The problem is its a negative externality we need to deal with. It may be that in many cases the advantages to individuals and companies do not outweight the benefits of polluting. However, there is a clear, large overall net problem- a classic collective action problem.
The real problem is media darlings and spokespeople picking out this or that specific thing as what must be tackled right now. In many cases they are right, but they are also often wrong and a penny packet approach won’t solve an issue of this scale anyway.
A firm tax policy will add further benefits to not polluting and will result in the market finding the most efficent way to cut carbon emmissions.
February 14th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Yes.
I probably should have made more of the Green Taxation as a means to internalise any negative externalities.
For many environmental problems it looks like firm property rights can help, I don’t see how that will work for things like climate change though…
February 14th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Well, the deterence from suing isn’t as high as from more direct intervention, and for more minor acts its quite possible the company could still come out ahead. I guess you can have punitive settlements inflicted in court, but thats just regulation under another guise.
Environmental issues are one of the areas where it just won’t fly without government intervention of some sort.