Subject: Costs of Pollution
I am involved in a debate about environmental conditions. My side argues that atmospheric and environ- mental conditions "aren't that bad". My side believes that current and future environmental regulations should be based on cost and not on how much help the environment actually needs. Do you have any sources I can find or evidence supporting my side of the arguement? It seems like everything is for protecting instead of cost effectiveness.
The questions you pose regarding environmental regulation and their
associated costs are good ones. In general, we deal only with
the scientific issues in this web forum, as this is a department
in which basic scientific research (as opposed to policy issues,
costs assessments, and other social issues) is conducted. I do,
however, have some general comments that may or may not help you make
your case:
In general, "costs" of anything are poorly defined entities that
can be manipulated by any side in an argument to make a cost-benefit
analysis support their position. As a scientist, I believe that
ultimate understanding of a situation and a complete assessment of
all variables gives you the fairest assesment of the impact upon
society of any situation. Impacts can be upon quality of life,
health, costs, etc.. With environmental "situations", there are
typically short-range and long-range effects of any "perturbed"
environment. Without placing a value judgement on this statement,
I do believe that most businesses confronted with assessing economical
impacts of their potentially deleterious activities toward the
environment take a very short range scope into consideration: to
wit, a dioxin or PCB spill can be considered from a variety of
costs perspectives, ranging from the cost of cleanup itself to
the long-term costs to the community in terms of persistent health
problems, diminshed productivity at work, etc.. that exist because of
the spill. These latter things are costs, but may not be immediately
of concern to a polluting entity. By the same reasoning, society has
to ask itself, is it entirely the "fault" of the polluters (and therefore
their fiscal responsibility) that pollution and environmental degredation
occur, or is it partly the fault of society for demanding the
goods and services produced by the polluting entity. In the
case of the PCB spill above, how many people realize that a major use
of this material is as a dieltric in common resistors on high
voltage electrical transmission lines. All who use electricity
are partially responsible for these highly efficient resistors to
be in a place where they could potentially cause an environmental
problem. On a grander scale, who will pay for any ill-effects of
potential global warming from society's excessive overuse of fossil
fuels that puts large excessess of CO2 into the atmosphere? Well, we
all will likely pay in some way, although some more than others (people
in coastal zones would obviously be worse off than someone living
at higher elevation when and if the polar ice caps partially melt,
although we will all feel the effects if global weather patterns shift as
predicted.
I suppose my view on the situation, as a scientist, is that environemtal
problems are real, and they have real short and long term costs. The
question is not really whether or not we should let a company pollute
because it is bad for business if they have to pay the costs to
prevent pollution, but rather how will society in general deal with
the costs, and how can they be fairly distributed amongst everyone
involved. Not protecting the environment because it is costly
is very unwise. It is as if to say I'm not going to set my
broken arm with a cast because it costs too much. These issues of
environmental quality cut right to the core of global health and
the welfare of all living organisms. What needs to be done to both
protect the environment and the viability of industry and commerce
is to all pay the price, in fair proportion, for the life we choose to
lead, the latter of which is based largely (for western society) upon
synthetic materials and environmentally dangerous practices.
Dr. Ken Rubin, Assistant Professor
Department of Geology and Geophysics
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822
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