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Re: The Limits To Growth
On 17 Dec 1996 22:38:12 GMT, davwhitt@med.unc.edu (David Whitt) wrote:
>In article <32B5A4A2.1538@bionomics.org>,
>Max Jacobs <mjacobs@bionomics.org> wrote:
>> . The Earth is so immensely complex that humans cannot manage
>>it at all. Remember Mt. Pinatubo? One volcanic eruption basically
>>eliminated all the global warming that had occurred for the past 100
>>years of industrialization. That is not to say that we arent negatively
>>affecting the environment, but we are not managing it, and we cannot
>>ever hope to do so.
>
>That is one of the points we environmentalists like to make. We are not,
>and can not manage our planet in a better way than nature. What we can do
>is try to reduce and limit the negative effects we have on the ecosystem.
This may very well be true. What makes soi-disant "environmentalists"
look so silly is the way they parade around saying they want to avoid
negative effects _as though there were some opposing force who wanted
to maximise them_! There is, of course, no such opposition. The
enviros are getting cheap thrills, it seems to me, out of opposing an
enemy that doesn't exist.
The central drive of the market oriented sector of the economy is
profit, and the major derivative drive is to do more with less. At an
elementary level doing more with less means reducing waste. Throw in
research and development and you have us making explorers to the stars
out of sand and dirt. More with less.
It is not environmentalists who have cleaned up the rusting hulks of
cars that littered the landfills when I was a kid. Somebody hauled
them away to make a profit.
This is normal operating procedure. This is the way the economy
works.
There are some deviant cases where it pays to pollute. For
slaughterhouses in Omaha it used to be cheap to just dump the cow guts
in the Mississippi. If they smelled by the time they got to New
Orleans, tough.
This gives one of the working definitions of pollution: overcharging
for something with a negative price, by selling it at zero. The
solution is to enforce the correct market price, zero or higher. If
you're a meatpacker and you have to pay somebody to take it away, then
you don't get to dump it on somebody else for less.
This is the general situation of "externalities," the assignment and
enforcement of correct prices. It's a difficult process, but a great
deal of progress has been made on it.
Unfortunately such progress is hampered by enthusiasts who confuse the
regulation needed to create a market, in which the prices of disposal
or cleanup are equilibrated, with regulations, fines and punishments
which scourge sin and punish the evil.
Too many environmentalists seem most interested in this last category
-- and this postpones useful action to protect and improve the
environment.
-dlj.
References: