Perhaps we can all agree that pollution causes some degree of a problem. The highly publicized cases of Love Canal NY, Woburn MA, the case dramatized in Erin Brokovich, etc….
All human biologic and productive activities produce waste products. It becomes a problem when the ability of the environment to absorb that waste is exceeded. 1 car on a country road is not a problem. 3 or 4 million of them in a basin subject to inversion layers is. How do we allow the former while preventing the latter is the question.
IMHO it's a problem of property rights and wholly economic in nature. Pollution is an externallity, something which is external to the markets for goods and services and a product of them. It is the nature of the producers to reduce costs, a foundation of the goal of economic efficiency. The environment is a public good, one for which no person real or artificial has property rights. Disposal of wastes are a cost of production and one which producers seek to reduce. The environment is a place waste can be dumped with little or no cost so a rational man will utilize that resource. The result is that a portion of the cost of production is placed on the public without compensation. The price of the good does not reflect it's true cost of production. Remember folks, this is a zero sum game. The cost may not be reflected in the product price, it is realized elsewhere in the community. That maybe in the form of increased birth defects or higher asthma rates or even increased temperature levels (if you don't think heat is a problem, try taking off the heat sinks inside your computer).
The ultimate solution to problems of pollution is to internalize them back in the markets. Market forces combined with policing by the government (think cops protecting our common property) is the easiest way to do this. The right to pollute is a valuable commodity and it belongs to the public. Rather than prohibit activities by individual producers, we can sell them those rights in a market similar to the commodities market. This is already done in the case of coal fired electrical generation plants. Why not all products? Let the invisible hand work it's magic.
Waiting to hear a better idea.
