i hope they would sue whoever the people are whose guilt could be demonstrated by evidence.
is there (or might there be) evidence that ‘the entire world’ is guilty?
how high are these high transaction costs? (do you have examples in dollar amounts?)
The nature of global warming is that just about everyone who drives a car is contributing to it. How would you sue all these people?
if there is evidence that would convince me ‘such and such a car driver committed such and such a property crime’ then sure it legitimate to prosecute that driver.
but you have avoided answering my questions asked in good faith.
Remember, we are assuming global warming is in fact man-made. This essentially means that, say rising sea levels, are caused by man-made emissions. Considering that just about everyone in the world is emitting CO2 via factories or automobiles, who would be the defendant in this violation of property rights?
They would sue, not EVERYONE, but ANYONE, who emits greenhouse gases without reabsorbing them (beyond some practical limit, such as excluding all emissions from human bodies and household wood fires for cooking). Petrol would likely be sold mostly with reabsorbtion services included. And victims would likely sue big emittors first, such as coal power plants and oil drillers (who burn unwanted gases at the well), who haven’t reabsorbed.
What’s the incentive for me to pay for these reabsorption services? If there is a disaster due to global warming, will I be sued?
There are way too many people involved in this for your solution to be feasible.
evidence?
Evidence of what? Again, we are assuming that global warming does exist and is in fact man-made.
your problems seem to be transaction costs. what is your evidence? yes there are a lot of people involved. there are lots of goods and services that involve large numbers of people in their production and lots that involve large numbers of people in their consumption, yet they happen, i wont accept that ‘large numbers of people’ being involved is code for ‘project not feasible’, you need additional arguments to make that case.
So there are 300 million people in the US, and most likely, all of them are emitting greenhouse gasses one way or another. Now, how do you propose suing all these people?
i’d start with gathering evidence against them, and when i feel it strong enough to make a good case against them, i will call my lawyer. and he will have a
Defendant class action on his hands
this is not evidence, and would not be admissable in court.
If you’re driving a car, you are contributing to global warming.
is that true if i own a forest? im conceivably a net co2 reducer.
EDIT:
thats just one single possible example undermining your statement
furthermore, i would think that estoppel would come in, such that even if it were true that ‘all car drivers contribute to global warming crime’, any such driver could not sue another driver for the crime he himself is doing.
Very true. Though obviously not many people own forests, it’s another reason why transaction costs would be high - figuring out how many net emissions each person is contributing is very difficult.
not so difficult, just pick less marginal cases, pick a factory in china, belching smoke, get an air pollution scientist to take measurements. bring them to court. the firm will have opportunity to provide evidence of sufficent offset, and would have opportunity to check for hypocrisy/estoppel on the part of the suit bringer.
this is assuming that some quantity of co2 emission can be proven to do some quantity of damage to someones private property. this is something i leave to scientists and lawyers.
And that is essentially the problem. The contribution of one factory to something as massive as global warming, is almost negligible.
so how many factories do you need to aggregate to get to what you think is ‘not negligable’? i think the answer is for market entrepeneurs to find, i dont think its a problem that can be best solved by government, nothing is.
Who knows? The point here is that global warming isn’t like any other pollution. The externalities are far too difficult to internalize, so to speak. It’s a clear case where the market fails.
you face a contradiction, you think that the contribution of any sueable person is negligable. why do you wan tto sue them, or curtail them then? if they are negligable so you cant say with confidence that they do bad, on what grounds can you control them or regulate them?
on the other hand, if the damage a person does is not negligable, but significant, why should you think the ‘externalities are hard to internalise’?