The Free Market and Protecting the Environment

Great Debates
41

You’re correct that a tree or an animal (or nature as a whole) doesn’t care whether the pollution comes from a communist system or a capitalist one (or from humans or Martians). However, environment concerns are not independent of economic (or otherwise political) systems–different systems tend to produce different amounts of pollution. You’ve heard of the green ceiling? For anyone that hasn’t, it’s the theory that people don’t care about protecting the environment unless they’re above a certain level of material wealth. Above that level, citizens begin to lobby their government to enact environmental regulations. Under this idea, a democratic, capitalist based system will be much better at protecting the environment than will other systems of organizing political and economic activity.

I disagree with your definition of artificial here. Very little of anything in the market happens “naturally” (with the probably exception of greed the feeling of ownership). Modern notions of things like property rights and the rule of law did not (and probably cannot) spontaneously evolve without government help. I don’t see market-mechanism based controls on pollution to be an artificial infringement into the market any more than any other potential extensions of property rights (example: I’ve heard it suggested that we should privatize some of the EM spectrum for broadcast TV or radio). This isn’t artificial, merely our society’s progress in better understanding what should and should not be considered property.

That is what is being attempted with pollution credits. We’re trying to find a way to place the effects of pollution into the framework of the market as a whole, rather than using more contra-market ideas.

Perhaps we could allow private companies to rent pollution credits to other private entities. This would allow market mechanisms to set the price for a pollution credit yearly purchase. The magic of this mechanism is that the seller does not need to know “how hard it is to fix the other guy’s pollution”, the seller must simply know how much the buyer is willing to pay for the pollution credit. As long as the supply of pollution credits is kept reasonably low, market mechanisms will cause the price to rise and punish the worst polluters, provide more economic incentive for borderline businesses to clean up their act, and the cleaner businesses find themselves having to pay less in pollution taxes, and maybe even make money off pollution loans.

Obviously, the credits will have to be allocated based on geographic area.

I’m not sure I understand your objections. The pollution credits are taxed at an annual rate (which should be directed into funding cleanup efforts), and the market sets the prices and distribution of the credits such that the businesses least able to operate cleanly must pay more. Competition by businesses over the ownership of the credits will drive up the prices, and offer incentive for other businesses to operate cleanly, while guaranteeing that pollution is kept below a certain level. Why would the cause the costs of pollution to be externalized?

It may not be impossible, in the strictest sense of the word, but that does not mean that it can be done. It’s technically possible to get large amounts of matter up to fractions of the speed of light, but that doesn’t mean we can currently do it, even if cost is not a factor. We’re working with limited technology, and sometimes companies simply cannot reduce pollution below a certain level without significantly raising the price of their goods, or simply going out of business.

42

You say that the credits are taxed and the taxes should be directed into funding the cleanup efforts. Will they be and are the taxes high enough to clean things up? Isn’t it at least as expensive to clean up after the pollution occurs as to prevent it in the first place? And if we know how to clean it up and dispose of the residue safely why can’t we do that before dumping it into the evironment? And, of course, companies routinely don’t really pay taxes. They just ask more than they need to keep for themselves in order to take care of taxes.

Here again, it seems to me that the sole determinant is the viability of the polluter. Isn’t there some facet of the dog-eat-dog (or vice versa) theory that says if a product can’t be produced economically it ought not be produced. This system is saying that in all cases we will allow part of the cost of making this product, i.e. the cleanup, to be passed on to society at large.

43

The entire point of pollution credits is that they should reflect the true enviroment cost of polluting. If you feel that 2 people polluting in 1 river is worse than 2 people polluting in different rivers, then what you can do is increase the cost of buying additional credit as the more polluted a river becomes which would give companies an incentive to move to another river.

True, if the price of credits does not reflect the true cost, then there is going to be inefficiency. I don’t think anybody’s managed to solve that problem yet. The best we can do is hope for an enlightened and impartial governing body relying on the best science at their disposal.

44

Perhaps I chose the term poorly, although in the context of previous posts I thought it was clear. I think you’re referring to infrastructure; that is, the institutions that have to exist in a society. By artificial, I mean regulation of the type to which free marketeers generally object. For instance, the notion of a public resource that, in its very existence, is not a private holding, such as the cordoning off of large tracts of land for preservation. These fall outside the purview of the market, as the whole point is to never give the market the chance to operate on them as commodities. It’s an aspect of protecting the environment that doesn’t admit market forces.

In my view, that would be considered an artificial restriction of the market. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’ve seen little to convince me otherwise. And again, even though some might be willing to include these types of regulation as part of the free market, I think that either: 1. most free marketeers do not or 2. it is left unstated, and therefore is ignored. In other words, the best tool for protecting the environment may actually be not considering certain things as part of the market in the first place.

45

Just this morning, I came across a book review of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond that might be of interest, as it sounds like it echoes the arguments in this thread. From the review:

46

Well, yes. The problem is that when you dump shit into the rivers and air, there’s no one who “ownes” it to say “knock it off”. If all land and sea is owned by someone, with rights enforced by the government, there is a cost associated with polluting. The problem is that everything we do has an impact on the environment. If you adequately capture the costs associated with destroying the environment, the market can balance peoples needs and wants against the environmental conditions they are willing to live in.

“Tragedy of the commons”, “externalities”, etc basically all mean the same thing. It’s like a story I heard about a village that had stored some wine barrels away for a celebration. A villager goes in a few nights before and takes a pitcher of wine and replaces it with water thinking his little bit won’t be noticed. When celebration times comes around, there’s nothing in the barrels but water. (for the extremely thick- the moral is that everyone basically thought their little bit wouldn’t matter and they all fucked the barrel).

Same problem with the environment. No one thinks their particular toilet is the one that screwed up the ocean. And without attaching some cost for just dumping your crap anywhere, their are strong disincentives to adopt pollution reducing technologies that increase production costs.

47

This basic misunderstanding is repeated by several persons in this thread; only the language differs. First, you’re all correct; there’s no such thing as an absolutely “free” market. The market, and each of its segments, is regulated to a greater or lesser extent by various governmental entities. The misunderstanding lies in that nobody, least of all the self-defined free market environmental organizations, is advocating that government has no role to play in protecting the environment. If you don’t believe me, go look at the links I’ve given for two of the biggest and most effective “free market” environmental organizations on the planet - The Nature Conservancy & The Thoreau Institute - see what they have to say about government being a active participant in the processes they endorse. A free market economy is generally understood as one in which individuals and other private entities make the majority of the decisions concerning transactions and economic activity without government coercion. The free market is not and never has been characterized by the complete lack of governmental regulation. At minimum, the government is required to provide and maintain a medium of exchage - in this case, the dollar.

Y’all need to get past that big ol’ ideological hurdle (and strawman) else this conversation will never yield a fruitful exchange of ideas. If we can’t convince y’all of that, would you at least be willing to stipulate for the remainder of this discussion so we don’t have to keep coming back to it?

The other idea implicit in your argument, elucidator, is that there is no way a value can be placed on a clean environment. Obviously others (many of them) disagree. Can you defend this proposition?

Well, since this thread is nothing more than arguing hypotheticals, this is a rather unfair demand to impose. It’s unanswerable. The best answer possible is “should;” we just can’t get to “will.”

Exactly. And there’s no way to attach a relevant and useful cost to anything without exposing it to market forces.

48

Perhaps. However, the terms “relevant” and “useful” are subjective and subject to widely varying interpretations.

For example, what is the relevant and useful price for a hoola-hoop? Whatever the market says it is, of course. But this is either a circular argument or is true by definition.

It is obvious, to me at least, that markets, such as the stock market, factor in a lot of hopes and expectations in addition to actual value in setting a price.

I suppose the market has the best available method because a price decision is reached quickly. You can’t stop and have a panel of experts take 6 months to investigate what a product should sell for and ever conduct an economy.

As a side comment on this whole thing. Us firms can’t claim a competitive disadvantage with respect to Europe because of strict US environmental rules in the manufacture of products. This Los Angeles Times makes this clear. Of course there is always the question of what the manufactures do with the toxics they remove from the end product. Assuming, of course, that the banned toxics were in the raw materials to start.

49

I am always happy to defend my propositions, Unc. I only demur in that I am not willing to defend your wild exaggerations of my propositions. If you skin my ideas and stuff the hide full of straw, well, yes, its a “strawman”. Didn’t leave here like that.

Just as you say (or is it “admit”?) there is no such thing as a “free market”. Why then is this invisible pink unicorn held to be relevent? A socialist centralized economy that is environmentally exploitive is just as disastrous, perhaps more so, than a healthy “free market”, as witness the example I presented.

The primary reason that a “free market” approach is doomed to irrelevence is the nature of the problem, that the problem is Nature. It is often truly stated that the capitalist approach is a marvelous machine for exploiting resources, it can focus energy in a truly wondrous fashion. Faith cannot move a mountain, neither can Mohammed, but the mountain can be ground into dust if there’s a buck in it.

Environmental responsibility is a collective responsibility, there’s no getting around that. The key lies in valuing our various political and social systems less than the planet upon which we all depend. If I cannot breathe the air, I am just as dead regardless of whether or not I am a socialist, an Islamist, or one who walks in the clear enlightenment of “free market” self-interest. John Galt must be as committed to recycling and energy conservation as Leon Trotsky.

Tinkering with the “free market” in the vain hope of finding “incentives” that will provide a useful substitute for common sense is a mug’s game. The environment is a collective responsibility, its degradation is a collective disaster, and the solution is a universal collective committment to its protection. Hence, a committment to the environment that is effective will supercede economic and governmental systems.

This requires a major realignment in our values. The exploitive approaches we have taken, whether in the name of entreprenuership, Allah, or the dictatorship of the proletariat will have to be scrapped. If this can only be achieved through a series of baby steps gingerly taken, so be it, we can only then hope that we arrive at the goal before the goal recedes beyond our reach.

50

The problem with idealogical solutions is that the actual implementation tends to be pretty vague. It’s all well and good to hope that common sense will prevent people from destroying the environment. Problem is that everything we do harms the enviroment. It’s all a matter of how much.

The only thing collectivism does is makes sure that NO ONE is responsible for anything enough to actually do anything about it. A centralized authority only cares about doing whatever it takes to stay the centralized authority - even if it means burning up resources 5x as fast to please everyone’s demands.

51

Sorry, 'luce, if I overstated your position. It seemed to me, no matter the examples provided by you later in that post, to be your central thesis, that since there is no such thing as a truly free market, that anything adopting that term, no matter how loosely, and no matter how inaccurately understood, would necessarily be doomed to failure and thus, not worth exploring.

You’ve told us what ugly forms—and the results we may reasonably expect from the historically “exploitative apporach” to managing the environment, but it leaves me wondering exactly what the “gingerly treading baby” approach might consist of. And what exactly is the goal it is laboring towards? If it is the incremental regulatory scheme currently implemented by government, then, given the cries about the environmental mess in which we currently find ourselves mired, that quite demonstrably (just as demonstrably as the exploitative approaches named by you) doesn’t work either. It just sounds like more and more of the same diaper fillings.

It is my way of thinking that the “free market” approaches championed by organizations like The Nature Conservancy and the Thoreau Institute, are actually the major realignment of thinking and values which you claim are requisite to solving the problem. Those methods, after all, combine the widest variety of interests—corporate, government, NGO & individual interests—and point them towards the goal, thus “collectivizing” the effort just as you advocate and doing so in across the widest possible spectrum.

Which leaves us with . . . nothing; nothing but social systems eternally doomed to ineffectuality. Polluters, (as if there was some giant congomerate sought to simply manufacture pollution and any other output would be considered merely a byproduct) will not be swayed by social ostracization. They can’t be; they are conscienceless. Except where economic (market) and governmental (regulatory) forces are concerned. And even the regulatory forces can be distilled into economic concerns. e.g. It they find regulations too cost prohibitive to comply with, alternative (and illegal) methods of reducing pollution will be sought.

52

Like so many huge problems, this one has a number of foci, and you’ve put your finger on one of the more crucial.

We Americans have a marvelous degree of flexibility as regards morality and social ostracization. We accept the legitimacy of corporations that sell products that are lethal when used as intended, it requires a spectacular capacity to ignore every tenet of morality we supposedly hold dear, but we manage, we manage…

Is it possible that we might arouse a morality that places our common good above access to loud and shiny crap? Gosh, sure hope so! We might very well convince our Brazilian brethren to cease and desist cutting down the rainforest, on behalf of that common good, but I suspect our chances would be better if we don’t drive to the conference in an SUV.

America must lead! So far, we have done a dismal job of it. We could have put into place some of the mildest of reforms, such as demanding greater gas efficiency, but as soon as moneyed interests squeel with porcine outrage…poof! gone! The dreadful truth is this: that there are people who would rather make money than breathe. (Your author recognizes that this is a dramatic simplification, and makes it anyway, in recognition that truth sometimes exceeds mere fact.)

If you can come up with a series of minor tweaks and band-aids that will erase The Problem, you will find me all ears, save for that part taken up by skepticism.

53

I’m responding to this all the while knowing that I’m placing that strawman up on a pedestal, and also while biting my tongue sharply enough to draw blood, but . . . I feel need to set fire to him. Bluntly put, bullshit. Most of us who’re not blinded by ideology recognize there are genuine and legitimate uses for these “products” which are in no way lethal. Your euphuistical prose, while often euphonic, and in this case even euphemistic, most certainly does not lend itself to my eupepsia. I find your allegory entirely objectionable. And wholly out of place. I refuse to swallow it as bullshit causes me indigestion.

And if I choose to misunderstand “moneyed interests” as politicians, the equation is unchanged. Again, regulatory efforts prove not only inefficient, but potentially counter-productive.

I’d like to think I’m as skeptical as you, but how you can dismiss a shift in paradigm (god, how I hate that word - and shake my little fist at you for making me use it) as “minor tweaks and bandaids” is beyond understanding.

Please explain to me your opposition to this: currently, when the U.S. government sells mineral (or logging, or grazing) rights on public land to a private interest, that entity must use that land for the stated purpose, else the rights are forfeited and re-sold to another entity who’ll do so. One of the ideas championed by the free market environmental groups (and even by Cato.org) would allow anyone to bid on and acquire those rights - regardless of intended use. This means, say, the Thoreau Institute can now raise money, bid on the logging rights in the Yellowstone forest, and put the land to whatever use they wish - or no use at all. If they wanna use it for eco-tourism, they may. If they wanna leave it alone as habitat for the timber wolf, they are free to do so. Just what the heck is so objectionable about that little “bandaid?”

54

Ah, yes, of course, it is me who is blinded by ideology, for if it were not so, I could readily see how much social value is contained in a pack of Marlboros, and how much Joe Camel furthers the public weal. A pity that I am so blinded, and I appreciate your kindly forbearance.

Shame on eu!

Nothing at all. Where did I say otherwise? You are forthrightly and belligerantly debunking an assertion I did not make. Which I suppose is to be expected, since you seem otherwise incapable of addressing the points I actually do raise.

You hate “shifting the paradigm”? Hell, I hate “raising consciousness”. Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do-whacka-do. The environmental ad with Big Chief Double-Down trickling a tear over the rape of Momma Earth makes me want to puke my guts out. Feh!

But if that’s what it takes to put us one step closer to assuring that my grandchildren (as yet merely a gleam in my DNA…) will live in the world I would have wished for myself, so be it.

If it should prove to be that the “capitalist” system needs be dismantled in favor of a more or less collectivist governance, that is a sacrifice I am prepared to make, as stern duty demands. If it requires the wholesale out-chucking of the Republican Party, I reluctantly accept the necessity. (Reluctantly…every cars gotta have some brakes…) Materialism and greed’s what got us into this mess, if you can cobble up a mechanism whereby they can rescue us, I’m all ears. I’ll even leave the soap box in place, you’re gonna need it, you’re gonna be preaching, one way or the other.

The bigger the stakes, the higher the ante. The stakes in this instance is the world, and life itself. I would like to think I’m wildly exaggerating. I don’t.

55

Balderdash, sir. The industrial revolution produced materialism. T’aint the other way 'round as you imply. Further, and far more importantly, man has been exploiting—and locally destroying—the environment for his own nefarious purposes, such as growing things to eat clothe himself in, since long, long, long before Thorstein Veblen coined the phrase “conspicuous comsumption.”

Thanks for that enlightening statement, Chicken Little. Care to hatch an egg we can actually make an omelet from?

Again then, I’m left wondering exactly what it is you do assert. The only real claim I see you making is that a “major realignment of our values must take place.” And I’m trying to figger out what the heck that means. You seem less than willing to, ahem, elucidate us. I’m afraid I don’t see anything you’ve posted which I’ve left unaddressed. Here, as I see 'em, in chronological sequence, are your points:

• Environmental concerns are independent of economic systems . . .
I disagree. This should be apparent; in actual fact I addressed this very issue prior to your initial post in this thread when I called a pristine environment a luxury good. If it’s commodity, then surely it cannot be independent of an economic system. Besides, that’s exactly the point of this thread - how can considering a clean environment be considered and managed in economic terms. Essentially what your claim means, is "it can’t. But you’ve not told us why.

• The remainder of your post #32 concerns the non-existent absolute free market.
Already commented in length on that - both before and after you posted it.

• Some noise about environmental good be a collective concern and an expression of your desire to see a collective solution in your post #49.
I explained how the free market environmental ideas championed by The Nature Conservancy and the Thoreau institute do just that - collectivize environmental concerns and solutions to an even greater extent than simple governmental regulatory processes seem to do by involving more and more varied interests.

• Also in your post #49 you explained that any effective collective solution will supecede economic and governmental systems.
I responded by stating, and demonstrating as ineffectual, the only remaining system left to us is then a social one.

• Finally we have in your post #49 the concept that a solution require a “major realignment” in our values.
That can only charitably be called a “point.” In any case I believe I responded substantively to your claim, nebulous tho’ it be.

• In post #52 we find your offensive gun allegory strawman; a platitude about America “leading;” and an anguished cry about “moneyed interests racing to the hog trough.”
Again, I’ve spoken to each of these.

We’re now to your post #54 where you whine about me no responding substantively to the points you’ve raised. As you can see, that is false. I’ve addressed every, no matter how much straw you’ve stuffed it with, point raised by you, so be a pal, and he’p me out here. It’d also be nice of you could tell us what form you envision solution taking.

56

You can, of course, prove this? Other than your bald assertion?

Gosh, Unc, don’t make this too easy, its like beating up a puppy! Is it not thunderingly obvious that our capacity for “destroying” has increased with a rapidity that would give Parson Malthus the heebie-jeebies? Get back to me if this point escapes you, though I haven’t any idea how I might address such a…ah…misunderstanding.

Substantive argument in the offing? After you’re done trying to belittle my argument by belittling me? Tsk.

Now, isn’t that cute. Unc’s just a down-home populist, albeit one who appears to swallowed an English Major whole. Hand me a cracker out of that barrell, if you wouldn’t mind. (Got a feeling “whine” is coming pretty soon, the Old Reliable…)

I quibble over the word “pristine”. Once again, you hope to belittle my position by exaggerating it. But, point of fact, that has been an ongoing failure of the “conservationist” movement: the desire to withold certain “pristine” environments from degradation so that they will be available to people who can afford them. In such instances, it is indeed a luxury good, in that it is inaccessible to persons of limited means.

Hokily-dokily. Details to follow? But you are too modest, given your other assertions, why limit yourself to “demonstrate” when you could have “proven beyond any possibility of rebuttal” or “In your face, 'Luc!”

Extraordinary! However did you manage to respond “substantively” to a claim you apparently don’t understand, finding it “nebulous”?

Huh? Wha?

Not quite kosher to put quotes around something I never said. Again, tsk

Ah! There it is! Kitchen sink, all complete now.

How will I solve this problem? With your insight and assistance. How will I gain that? I’ve no idea. Bribery? I’ve no money. Hot sex? Even were you gay, you would have to be desperate as well. Appeals to your conscience? Hmmmm, OK, how does 2 bucks and an old copy of Portnoy’s Complaint? sound?

57

How’s 'zat? I don’t think it is possible to belittle, or embiggen, your position. For the simple reason: You don’t appear to have one.

We done here? One of us is.

58

I didn’t think it proper nor advisable to step into this before, as I find elucidator can defend himself, and generally puts things much more clearly than I. However, the following gave me pause:

Do I misunderstand what you mean by “materialism”? Are you implying that, prior to the industrial revolution, humans did not covet material things?

Naturally, you are correct that humans have been “exploiting” the environment for as far back as there were humans. See the book review I linked to in a previous post. Of course, I would hope that you would admit that there has been a fundamental change in the relationship between humans and the environment, just in the past couple centuries. Surely it’s clear that humans are having a more substantial impact on their environment than ever before. Numbers matter. This implies that we cannot treat our relationship with the environment as we have been doing up to this point.

Lest I be misinterpreted, I’m not claiming that humans necessarily damage the environment, that we should go back to living in grass huts. But it seems to me that you’re taking the position of fundamentalists (I think that’s an appropriate term, but no matter; it’s the meaning that’s important, not the word itself) who claim that we cannot damage the earth. Ever.

Do I have that right? If so, it seems folly on your part (again, for proof that humans can indeed harm the environment, see mention of Easter Island, the Anasazi, etc.) and I see no way to convince you otherwise. I’d like to know your position on this before going any further, for it would be unproductive otherwise.

59

There is nothing in there with which I disagree. This answer should also stand as rebuttal to your assessment of my position in your next paragraph. I’m really not sure how you came to these conclusions given my constant endorsements and promotions of the ideas proposed by the Nature Conservancy and the Thoreau Institute. And I don’t really much care.

Back to the claim in the paragraph quoted above:

Exactly - we cannot treat our relationship with the environment in a fashion identical to what we’ve been doing for the last couple hundred years - and that has been almost wholly by regulatory action. Which is why I suggest implementing many of the concepts championed by the “free market” environmental groups as linked by me previously. I believe these concepts represent a whole new direction in management of the environment - a direction that will produce the desired results more efficiently (not to mention more palatably to true conservatives) than the current regulatory atmosphere. A direction that optimizes - to the extent that that word is applicable - land and resource use for the greater good of a wider range of interests.

There’s nothing to convince me of at this time; I’m already convinced. (With the parenthetical exception that I’m not sure that efforts to preserve the enviroment as we find it today doesn’t thwart evolution, or that it is desirable to do that. A whole other thread, I’m sure.) Does this make my position more clear? There’s really nothing in this post that I haven’t stated already in this thread - some of it several times.

I don’t think you are misunderstanding me. Allow me to explain. Coveting things prior to the Industrial Revoltion just didn’t matter. Goes back again to the fundamental shift in man’s relationship to the environment in the recent past. Is it not a tenet of post-modernisn that materialism is a quite recent development in human history? Prior to the Industrial Revolution, people may have coveted things, but they were simply unattainable; they were unrealistic expectations; pipe dreams. Only with the advent of the Industrial Revolution did the attainment of these dreams and expectations become possible for the common man. Dreams aren’t the cause of pollution; manufacturing is. Thus, materialism, or rather the coveting of manufactured goods, simply did not matter prior to this era.

(And Jared Diamond’s book Collapse is sitting at home on my desk near the top of the “read soon” pile.)

60

OK, so evidently I did misunderstand what you were saying, at least to some extent. Which is good; I felt that must be the case, but had to check first.

I think this is problematic:

The issue is not how we’ve been treating the environment for the last couple centuries. I brought that up simply to establish that there has been a fundamental change in humans’ relationship to the environment during that time (again, just as a reality check to make sure I understood you). Now granted, one might claim that regulation of the sort you are asserting may have only taken place recently, but first of all, that’s not the issue to which I’m referring and second of all, it’s irrelevant to that which I am referring. The issue is, at least in my mind, that we are currently in a position to screw the environment up on a global scale, which we have never been able to before. More below…

And personally, I don’t dismiss this. In fact, market approaches may very well provide the best methods in some cases. What I take issue with is the assertion that market forces are best for protecting the environment, no ifs, ands, or buts. That is, treating the whole of the environment as a commodity. And this is the crux of my original question. I can lay it all out again if you wish, but I don’t think you require me to do so.

Now, I believe that (at least part of) elucidator’s point is that by subjecting “the environment” wholly to market forces, we allow anyone with enough money who puts a higher value on something other than protecting the environment to damage it irreparably. Furthermore, due to the nature of corporations (whose sole function is to maximize profit), even if no one entity does this, we will end up dying a death of a thousand cuts by allowing it.

Which I believe is also the position taken by some objecting to “pollution credits”; by setting a level of pollution, it is folly to think that pollution will ever be below that level. In essence, it’s the problem of budgets; it is common wisdom that, when allotted a given amount of money, a department should spend at least its limit, if not make attempts to exceed that limit. There is little incentive to not remain at that limit (one might argue that the manufacturer that invents a zero-pollution technique will make hand-over-fist more money than a company that doesn’t, but the cost of such pure R&D is, I’d think, not cost-effective in the slightest).

Ultimately, it seems to me as though those espousing “the market is the best tool for protecting the environment” set nothing outside the reach of the market, willfully ignoring the fact that yes, there are some things (but certainly not all!) that should be simply forbidden.

Well, I look forward to reading any threads discussing issues you find problematic with his position.