I can’t agree with you here, I think that due to the sheer size of this issue the market can’t handle it. If you think about what would be necessary to cut CO2 emissions by the required amount I think it quickly becomes clear that the prisoners dilemma and the transaction costs involved prevent any sort of market solution. In order to fight this sort of problem it would be necessary that a potential poluter must contract with every individual that his polution might harm. However, this just doesn’t look feasible to me, especially since everybody polutes to some extent or another.
Now, whilst I think the government may be necessary for governing this particular commons, that doesn’t mean I advocate government.
I would say, to pollution in general as well, that sure, as long as human beings exist, environmental problems will as well, but given that it is a fact that governments are sink-holes for pollution, simple reforms to minimize or transform it out of existence would do wonders.
Also, there is a movement out there called free-market environmentalism, which stems from the original conservation movement - which was inherently about conservation and I would say, very capable of connecting to markets.
Isn’t that something we just kind of have to deal with, though?
I mean, thinking about the nature of human beings, we’re very similar to parasites and there are only a few examples I can think of where human beings reach equilibrium or benefit the environment itself.
I mean, I guess I understand why people don’t like that fact, but I think it’s one human beings just have to learn to live with. The fact is that this planet is a host for us and that’s all. We’re parasites, we will pollute and eventually destroy this planet. There’s no changing that unless we go through sudden extinction.
The solution I can think of? Space travel. We can’t stop ourselves from polluting completely, but we can get to a point where we’re like a small mosquito on an elephant where we can suck from the universe but never actually make much of a dent in it as a whole.
My point was really more that whilst I think voluntary mechanisms and institutions can solve the problems posed by most commons, I just don’t think that the Ozone layer or the atmosphere is one of these. This just isn’t something consenting individuals can solve on their own. For me global warming and Ozone depletion are of relatively little interest, warmer weather is always great as far as I’m concerned (except for during the ski season) and well, I just don’t care about the Ozone layer because a little extra radiation whilst I’m by my pool doesn’t bother me. If you want to advocate some sort of government to solve this problem you’re going to have to make a value judgement. If you consider the long term interests of humans to be of such importance and global warming to be a considerable threat, or you just think that nature should be preserved for its own sake then you have to go ahead and advocate some sort of coercive system. Because without coercion you’re not going to get the Dutch guy with his windmill by the coast and wooden shoes and the big industrialist to agree on a solution, let alone the 7 billion odd other people that inhabit this planet.
Actually now that I’ve given this more thought, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Given what we know about governments and markets from the Austrian and Virginia schools of economics I’d say that the solution would be worse than the problem in this case. I mean, for one thing we don’t know enough about global warming to make any sort of judgement right now anyway. Now, let’s say that the entire world is in a state of anarchy and all of a sudden a bunch of people get together and form some sort of coercive institution to deal with the problems of global warming. If scientists one day realised they were wrong about climate change and turned around and said “hey, look guys, we’re awefully sorry but we messed up big time” I don’t think that the interventions would be particularly easy to turn around, as Mises has said. I also think this sort of intervention is particularly prone to rent seeking and in fact I was speaking to a friend about this the other day regarding the Portuguese minister of the environment and the wealth he had mysteriously acquired.
On top of that I think it’s worth adding that even if governments did have perfect information and there was no public choice problem, the environment would still, sooner or later, degrade as long as human beings continue to exist. I say this simply because human beings really seem to take more from the Earth than they give.
I don’t want this to be confused with the type of green rhetoric that you might here from someone else, however, I am by no means misanthropic. I’m fine with the idea of human beings as parasites and I think others should accept it as well. I think this because I’m interested in the prolonging of my future generations and I don’t think that human beings will survive much longer - at least not relatively - if we don’t accept that this planet is temporary for us and work further towards colonizing space.
There is a pollution problem. It’s poisonous, and claims millions of lives. It destroys property, silencing the affected before they can warn others. It’s also known to cause emotional and psychological breakdown.
I know it is late (three years) but let me try this about your ozone question.
Did you know that CFCs were five times heavier than air? How could it possibly travel 40 miles upwards and start destroying the ozone layer? In a world like ours with a logical gravity, I don’t see how CFCs could be responsible for the ozone depletion.
The question not being asked here is, “A free market in what?” Free market courts would enable private citizens to sue polluters to hell and back for harming them by degrading their water, air, etc. - regardless even of any remaining ownership claim ambiguities like “who owns the atmosphere.” It is only by government decree that such torts are largely inadmissable in modern state courts. This is an easy knock-down argument, so the pages of not-so-satisfying answers is a bit of an eyesore (but it was 2009).
We have to ask ourselves why producers used Freon in the first place.
Producers started using freon because the gases that were already in use were gases like sulphur dioxide and ammonia.
What those gases had in common was that they were toxic, yet in common use.
Thus, the free market operators found a gas that could do the same job just as well, or even better, but as far as they knew wasn’t toxic, caustic and flammable. (Unlike the common refrigerants at the time.)
The idea that these market operators would not have changed from freon r-22 to puron because they only care about making money, or that such a change is somehow impossible because it is too costly or too big a paradigm-shift is thus exploded by the fact that they by that line of argument would still be using chloromethane as a refrigerant.
Free marktet operators have a strong incentive to maintain good will, and to provide a product that they can boast of. “Not part of destroying all life on our planet” is a damn good endorsement for any product.
As Friedman points out, in a statist society good law is a public good and bad “special interest” law is a private good. So the result is that good law is undersupplied and bad law is oversupplied.
For every law that helps the environment, there are probably a dozen laws that give companies a license to pollute it.
As for the ozone problem, international agreements on airspace, frequencies and air quality are between autonomous entities (since governments are sovereign). Governments can respect their contracts with each other because they have a capacity to retaliate via sanctions and war as a last resort. Of course, governments are able to offload the cost of war onto taxpayers, therefore they are predisposed towards it.
But what is to stop protection agencies agreeing to make the use of certain pollutants a crime, and keeping those agreements for the same reason the Austrian government does not let companies use frequencies reserved by the Swiss government?
As for climate change, I think any action undertaken by governments to solve it, would harm people to a greater extent by reducing prosperity and making us poorer.