Return of the Haze
best, revolution at worst. Add to this explosive situation the smog that removes the most basic right of all -- the right to breathe. The result is the very frightening and very real possibility that social unrest and riots will increase in frequency and intensity through the summer.
Avoiding the tragedy of the commons is the responsibility of government. Individuals should ideally refrain from overuse of natural resources, but each individual perceives that he cannot do much significant damage himself, few voluntarily restrict their personal pollution output. Many companies think the same way. Corporate environmental disasters like Bhopal and Minamata notwithstanding, most argue that by themselves, they do not cause significant damage, and thus do not voluntarily restrict their pollution output. Government is the only agency that can force companies to restrict their pollution output in a democratic nation.
There are several policy options for governments to address environmental abuse. One option is to simply set ceilings on pollution levels for individual companies or industries. Another option involves the use of tax incentives for companies to limit their pollution, basically allowing companies to pollute as much as they want, but forcing them to pay for it. Both of these options should be applied where necessary, even if they incur some economic cost or force job loss.
A third option, gaining popularity in the wake of the Kyoto COPIII accord signed last December, is the concept of "pollution credits," where each country is assigned a certain "allowable pollution," and if it exceeds that pollution, it faces strict fines. Nations that do not need to pollute that much can sell their pollution credits to nations that do, so that the total amount of pollution remains constant. That amount can be reduced gradually over years and decades, which will put an economic premium on pollution, raising the prices of the pollution credits, and thus forcing companies to innovate in order to reduce pollution.
The pollution credits theory makes some sense, but it faces two difficulties. The first is in the initial allocation of the credits. No nation will receive as much credit as they think they need, and a compromise plan, one that actually does significantly reduce overall pollution, is a pipe dream. Many developing nations are heavy polluters, but their economies would be greatly harmed by pollution cutbacks. These nations were essentially omitted from COPIII, since they refused to sign an environmental treaty that would undermine their
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