Environment

Does anyone have any real convincing arguments on how libertarianism (or anything else for that matter) can help to save the environment? Right now I'm very pissed off that I can only eat a small amount of ocean fish because of methyl-mercury poisoning. I don't see how we can solve this global problem and simultaneously maintain strict individual rights.

-Mike

As Michael Edelstein has already pointed out, the US government is by far the largest polluter in the country; additionally, most other pollution is done by companies on government land, in the context of government contracts. Few entities, including short-sighted profit-driven corporations, want to pollute land they own.

The main issue, to me, is that it's not really possible to pollute only your land. (There may be a few exceptions, but generally, they're called "littering", not "polluting".) If one person damages another person's property, that act is and should be actionable in a court of law.

The problem, of course, is distributed damage, both in the case that one polluter may hurt a large number of people a little bit, and in the case that many polluters may do a little bit of damage that adds up. The first case is addressable with class action lawsuits. The second is harder; consider the case of pre-catalytic-converter cars. I don't have an answer to that, except to say that if we cleared up the major point sources of pollution, the smaller, distributed sources might not prove to be so bad. Or that we could consider how to tackle them later, after dealing with the worst single offenders (like the US government).

~Chris

(in part):

As Michael Edelstein has already pointed out, the US government is by far
the largest polluter in the country...

And quite probably the largest polluter in the city, too. :wink:

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