Both within and immediately following the Giant Squid thread, Libertarian had expressed an interest in the question of environmental standards; specifically, he’s asserted–here, for instance–that a single law prohibiting coercion (and implicitly defining pollution as coercion) would be enough to take care of pollution in a libertarian context.
Lib agrees that demanding zero pollution in order to be coercion-free is silly, but hasn’t yet answered my next question. And that’s what this thread is for.
Which question is, of course: How do you set pollution standards in Libertaria? Who decides what an acceptable (read as: non-coercive) level of pollution is, and on what basis? In today’s society, these aren’t easy questions. Show me how Libertaria makes them easier.
To take but two of many examples: What standard governs how many parts per million of benzene may a source emit before being coercive? (Different standards are considered in Industrial Union Dep’t v. American Petroleum Institute, 448 U.S. 607, 667 (1980).) What standard governs how many parts per billion of arsenic may be in our drinking water before it becomes coercion? (The Bush Administration’s initial decision to rescind the Clinton Administration’s standard here is debated in Cass Sunstein, The Arithmetic of Arsenic, 90 Geo. L. J. 2255 (2002) and Lisa Heinzerling, Markets for Arsenic, 90 Geo. L. J. 2311 (2002).)
It’s not a black and white issue. This isn’t Goldilocks–the choices aren’t simply “too little pollution,” “too much pollution,” and “just the right amount of pollution.” It’s a sliding scale–some level of pollution will have bad effects now, some level will have bad effects later, and some level will probably have bad effects later, but we can’t say for sure. And the potential effects of each level range wildly from serious to trivial, health-based to economic. Which level do you choose? How do you choose?
These kinds of questions are tackled by the EPA and OSHA nowadays. How would Libertaria replace them?
(Everyone–Libertarian, libertarian, or non-libertarian–is welcome to join in to figure out a good answer.)