Just wondering, how would private ownership of airspace work?
Could businesses and individuals just buy out tracts of airspace where they could fly their planes? Also, what impact would this have on pollution? Could individuals sue others for polluting their airspace? Would this really have an effect on carbon emissions and global warming, or would people just sue over smog and related visible and detectable pollution?
I’m asking because I’m getting into a debate with another person on a forum on capitalism and environmentalism, and the issue of pollution and common law came up.
Well for someone to succesfully stop carbon emissions from airplanes, they would first have to demonstrate that this activity has caused damage to their property, which so far no has done anywhere.
As for the rights to airspace, if the use of airspace by one plane interferes with the use of airspace by another, then this creates a problem of scarcity that must be resolved by establishing property rights. These rights would then be traded until an economic optimum is reached, most likely by the accumulation of airspace by the owners of airports.
Of course airspace is presently nationalized, so the question isn’t so much as how to create property in airspace, but how to undo the damage caused by the public ownership of airspace. If, as predicted, the airports end up owning the airspace in their region, then the cities and estates can purchase rights from the airports to limit the smog-causing pollution, or simply purchase the airports and regulate air traffic to achieve the same effect.
That’s the wrong way around. They wouldn’t have to purchase “rights” to prevent pollution of their property; the airport owners would have to purchase (or something) permission to pollute.