don’t forget to measure how much CO2 is in each breath you take. Then, you’ll know how much CO2 disposal you have to pay for. If you can’t afford it, stop breathing!
As in all rulings of the courts, there will be limits and definitions which relate to the practical world. Greenhouse gas emissions from human bodies could easily be exempted. It’s like defining what is an assult, tapping your finger on somebody’s shoulder? No, that would be a very silly argument.
I’m not ready to give up arguing that property rights cannot solve the antropogenic global warming scare, even if it would turn out to be a real threat. Today the "frontline"lies in the scentific arguments. But most politicians (however not the current EU chairman Vaclav Klaus, whom I linked to earlier in this thread!) already act on the assumption that AGW is real. Therefor it could be useful to take that what-if discussion seriously.
Of course. Governments are creating more problems for them to “manage” in the future!
But if global warming is antropogenic, as was the assumption in the OP, then what is your take on it? You wouldn’t laconically argue that if I pollute your real estate with plutonium, then it would become profitable for you to move somewhere else?
Carbon dioxid is one of those externalities people will have to learn to adapt to and live with if they are to live in a peaceful society.
Why?
Where is the limit defined between CO2 and Plutonium?
They are different in kind.
It would be impossible for a truly free market to establish some kind of carbon tax or cap and trade system. In the case of you dumping plutonium on my property or a coal power plant polluting neighboring property, there is a clear violation of property rights. In the case of carbon emissions, there is no such clear violation of property rights. Everyone emits carbon, should people be taxed or charged for that? Is it possible to measure how much carbon each person emits? It’s just as hard to calculate who exactly suffers from carbon emissions and thus should receive compensation from greater carbon-emitters. After all, don’t the people harmed by carbon emissions emit carbon themselves? What about other people who benefit from increased carbon (e.g. farmers)?
Moreover, the carbon is released into the air, which nobody owns. Air is not a scarce resource here on Earth, and cannot be priced like other objects. Carbon only indirectly causes property damage (by causing global warming which causes flooding), so there really isn’t any property rights violation. It’s hard to say that me exhaling some amount of carbon damaged some Floridian’s property only because that carbon blocked some sunlight and that sunlight melted some ice. By buying that property, one can argue that the Floridian understood the risks of flooding. Furthermore, one can argue that the property would have flooded even without my contribution of carbon. So what gives?
Carbon “pollution” is not a problem which can be solved by markets, because any attempt to solve such a problem is inherently arbitrary and has no basis in property rights. Carbon helps some, yet hurts others, but only in an indirect manner. Ultimately, the market cannot solve carbon emissions, but it can solve issues surrounding global warming. Increased sea levels and more environmental catastrophes like floods and hurricanes can be taken care of by normal market incentives. Coastal land would become higher risk, and due to the lack of federal flood insurance, people would have an incentive to live inland. At the same time, there would be an incentive for coastal property owners to build levees, plant forests, allow swampland to develop, etc. in order to protect their property holdings from floods and hurricanes.
No! It is even easier than employing property rights on plutonium emissions, because CO2 has only global effects. It doesn’t matter where or how you emit CO2, all emissions have the same effect proportional to quantity emitted. So, simply, what you emit you must clean up.
Why don’t you just define it as an externality which market forces can’t handle?
Actually, everyone emits some atom of plutonium and other poisons too once in a while, so there’s no distinction in principle.
But as I’ve already stated twice in this thread, emissions from human bodies could easily be exempted by courts. Such emissions aren’t willful anyway. But burning coal in order to generate electricity is, as is breeding cows ( a cow emits much more greenhouse gases than any car does).
Only those who suffer has cause to sue emitters. Those who benefit from it will of course not. It is exactly the same as with plutonium emissions, because property owners in other areas will profit from your land becoming worthless and you coming to bid on their land instead. They profit from it.So how will the problem of who will sue who be solved? How did you even come to think that there could be a problem of that kind???
So if my fist travels a meter through unownable air before it hits your face, it is only “indirect damage” and therefor your rights were not violated by me?
If I send out a spacecraft to redirect an asteroid so that in crasches into the unowned Atlantic, I through a gigantic tsunami indirectly cause the sealevel to rise and therefor I didn’t harm anyone?
Bull! If I willfully emit gases into the atmosphere which destroy others property through rising sea levels, then I must stand accountable for that to each and everyone in the world who claims damages from that effect which I willfully caused. Even if the chain of cause and effect passes through some unowned media such as the atmosphere or an ocean.
That’s exactly the problem you have with local damages, such as plutonium! Maybe the victims cancer was caused by his cell phone or something he ate? Prove that!
With greenhouse gases it is so very much simpler, because each and every CO2-molecule have exactly the same effect. The effect is proportional only to quantity emitted, not to how or where emission took place. Actually, CO2-molecules dissolve and reform continuosly in the atmosphere. They don’t have individual identities. Emitting greenhouse gas is like applying a pressure on the atmosphere to increase its concentration of that greenhouse gas globally.
That’s the argument of the statist, the argument of Al Gore! I’ve described how it can be solved by markets (or enforcement of property rights). And indeed it is even easier to solve than most other pollution violations of property!
Since human emissions of greenhouse gases (according to the assumption in this thread that it is proven to raise the sea level), that’s much like saying that the threat from looting gangs, is solved by the market forces through people loosing their property and running for the hills.
Global warming is real, and there is nothing un-libertarian about believing it. Several libertarian solutions off the top of my head:
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Green capitalism, free market environmentalism, and private efforts to teach and persuade people.
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Ending all government barriers/disincentives to producing new and better technology.
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Ending transportation subsidies and road socialism would make people far more careful about how much/often they drive.
Plutonium is fine providing you don’t ingest it.
It generates a lot of alpha radiation, which is blocked by your skin.
As for the global warming hypothesis, please keep in mind that this is supposedly a scientific theory that is subject to scientific criticism.
For risks that are diffuse and unpredictable (not to mention hypothetical) and where the contributors to the risk are diffuse (and practically universal), insurance is a reasonable solution. I think.
Slightly off topic: Air can be priced if it is properly homesteaded.
-See “Oxygen Bars”
-the air pump at any gas station
-If someone wanted to build a livable colony(maybe anarchist) under the ocean, they may chose to charge for their air supply.
This is basically how I feel about the issue. Leftists devote an endless amount of time and effort toward proving that individuals aren’t completely egotistical and greedy, then reject green capitalism on the basis that people couldn’t POSSIBLY voluntarily turn to ecological goods (viz. electric cars) because they are somewhat less cost-efficient than polluting goods. People have already come to consider ecological characteristics of goods valuable (organic food, fair-trade coffee, etc.) so there is no reason that this can’t apply to things like vehicles and energy production.
Herein lies the problem. Global warming isn’t something that’s “incremental”. It’s at some critical level where damages occur. My emissions alone don’t hurt anyone. But my emissions, combined with those of millions of others, can inflict great damage. That’s what makes it a public good, something that cannot be solved by property rights.
How, pray tell, does it make it a “public” good?
Well global warming is a public bad, the air is a public good. The very nature of global warming is that the social cost exceeds the private cost, because of externalities which the other poster pointed out.
No, you don’t understand. The damage caused by greenhouse gases are gradual. It’s as if ten persons together device a bomb, the explosion of which killes someone else. They all had equal parts of the murder. Everyone who emits greenhouse gases, without cleaning it up, is guilty to all global AGW damages in exact proportions to the mass of his/her net emissions. This unique nature of greenhouse gases is therefor extremely favourable for the application of property rights.
I can’t even think of any other case, where the efficiency of property rights could in practice, or even theoretically, be applied more purely and totally, than in the case of greenhouse gas emissions with respect to global warming damages! The very concept of AGW is the ultimate and perfect illustration of how the simple application of property rights finally triumphes over collectivism.
And ProudCapitalist’s point is that this need not be the case.
So in this world, suppose an entire neighborhood in Bangladesh is wiped out because of global warming (higher sea levels). Who should these people sue? Global warming is caused by millions of individuals. This is clearly a case where transaction costs are very high, and according to Coase property rights are not sufficient in these cases to solve externalities.
“bilateral class (or mass) action” would seem to be appropriate. if organising a large suit is particularly challenging, but woud have value, why are we skeptical that firms will enter the market to seek profits inproviding this specialist service?
Yes, a class action suit by the victims, but who are they suing? The entire world? This doesn’t seem very practical to me. Again, the transaction costs are too high.