From: sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com (Fred Welden)
Newsgroups: alt.society.civil-liberty
Subject: Re: A libertarian solution to air pollution
Date: 14 Apr 92 20:09:25 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Originator: sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com
X-Bytes: 23063

I apologize for the length of this response.  I read and re-read the
original posting in an attempt to convince myself that this bizarre
and misguided argument was in fact a parody of Libertarian ideals,
but I failed.  I think I'll have to take it face value and try to
respond to it point by point.

In article <1992Apr10.224846.6324@acsu.buffalo.edu>, sulkom@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Philandros) writes:
|
|       ATTENTION!
|
|       How many of you have wondered: what is a libertarian solution
|to the problem of automobile pollution?  Wouldn't they all have to
|sue each other?
|
|       Below is a solution that does not promote such a complicated
|legal mess, and yet involves property rights.
|
|
|Mark Sulkowski
|Vote for a Change... Vote Libertarian!
|__________________________________________________________________________
|
|THE FREE-MARKET ENVIRONMENTALIST
|
|Environmental Quality/Economic Prosperity - An Achievable Ideal
|
|Volume 1, Number 1
|
|An Introduction
|
|I thought that, perhaps, some personal background would be in order in
|this first issue.  Following graduation from the University of
|California at Davis in 1979, I was employed as a geologist in an
|environmental consulting form.  My career began with the water resources
|investigations associated with the Air Force's proposed mobile basing
|of the MX missile.  In 1981, Reagan decided to use the existing,
|hardened silos rather than mobile basing.  I hope national security was
|served because my job certainty certainly wasn't.
|
|I took my walking papers and enrolled in graduate school.  After several
|years of graduate studies, I reentered the workplace and began focusing
|on ground-water contamination issues.  This entailed interesting
|problems, such as oil slicks floating on ground water, surface pond
|leakage into subsurface soils, and contaminatiot migration in low-
|permeability ground-water aquifers.
|
|Eventually, I realized that our services were being rendered to "the
|environment" rather than to human beings.  This is the crux of
|environmentalism ("The Toxicity of Environmentalism") George Reisman
|has summarized as follows: "The environment is considered to be a
|value in and of itself, apart from its relation to human beings."
|FME is dedicated to providing an alternative to the environmental
|ethic by upholding the principle that the environment should serve
|human beings.
|
|Owning the Air: A Market Alternative to the Clean Air Act
|
|The value of free markets is widely recognized as their ability to
|produce those goods and services for which property rights are easily
|stipulated.  Air has generally not been viewed as being amenable to the
|application of property rights.  This article, an extension of the air
|rights example in FME December 1990, will demonstrate how property
|rights apply to air.

If this is the first issue, how can it be an extension of an example
previously published in this journal?

|First, let's review the present method of mandating standards.  In late
|1990, the Clean Air Act was amended.  Among other things, the revised
|Act mandates reductions in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from
|tailpipe exhaust.  The mandate is based on the assertion that VOCs
|cause the formation of ozone, one of the principal components of smog.
|The EPA has been striving for years to reduce VOC emissions from
|automobiles.  In fact, from 1974 to 1988, VOCs were reduced by more
|than 40 percent in American urban areas.  However, the average level
|of ozone INCREASED slightly during that time.
|
   Does your evidence suggest that reduction of VOCs was
   unconnected with ozone levels, or merely that there are other
   additional sources of ozone?  Because if there are other sources,
   then we would expect that had VOC emissions continued at the base
   level, ozone levels would have gone up greatly, an undesirable result.

|The EPA has estimated that controls on nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbon
|emissions will add $100 to the price of new automobiles.  However, a
|Brookings Institute study has shown that regulations that raise car
|costs slow the turnover of cars, leaving more old cars on the road.
|These cars burn fuel less efficiently and generate higher emissions.
|Pre-1981 cars now account for 83 percent of all VOC emissions. (Warren
|Brooks, "Will Senate Declare War on Family Autos?" Human Events, Feb 3,
|1990; and Rose Gutfeld, "Clean Air Proposal Eventually May Add As Much
|as $600 to Car Sticker Prices," Wall Street Journal, Oct 11, 1990.)
|
|Air pollution is a complex issue.  As such, it requires a principled
|approach that allows the incorporation of new information while insuring
|flexibility to address the problem.  These requirements can be met by a
|free market.
|
|What Is Pollution?
|
|The first thing required is a better definition of pollution.  Today,
|pollution is commonly considered to consist of industrial wastes that
|adversely affect human life.  However, this definition is too narrow.
|It needs to be expanded to include non-manmade sources because nature
|is also a polluter of the environment.  Edith Efron (The Apocalyptics,
|Chapter 4) lists numerous examples of natural pollution including the
|following:
|
|* Radioactivity of uranium in the earth's crust
|
|* Sulfur dioxide (SO2) that occurs naturally in air.
|
|* Metals such as arsenic, that are emitted from plants and degassing of
|the earth's crust
|
|* Asbestos contained in the earth's soil and rocks.
|
|* Hydrocarbon emissions from forests which exceed man's contribution to
|the atmosphere sixfold.
|
|These facts may seem surprising, but are understandable when we realize
|that, strictly speaking, man does not create new matter; he merely
|reforms it.  Elements from wastes in industrial processes are not
|created out of thin air; rather, they are merely different forms or
|combinations of elements that already exist.
|
|In this context, the question becomes: If pollution exists in nature
|outside of man's influence, how do we define it?  Pollutants can be
|defined in relation to their affect on human life.  Elements in the
|natural or manmade world that adversely affect human life should be
|considered pollutants.
|

   Why do you need to dance around redefining pollution?
   To pollute means to defile, debase, make impure or dirty by the
   addition of something harmful.  Thus, volcanoes pollute when they
   spew sulfur dioxide into the air.  Pine trees pollute by releasing
   alpha pinene.  Bears pollute by shitting in the woods.  People
   pollute by any number of means.

|Counter to prevailing perceptions, industry, for the most part, reduces
|pollution.  When we modify and control our environment, we can reduce
|our exposure to pollutants.  In fact, increasing industrialization has
|actually increased our life span.  The average American life span has
|increased from 47 in 1900 to 74 years today (Elizabeth Whelan, 1985,
|Toxic Terror, p. 255.)

   You offer no evidence that industry reduces pollution.  The increase
   in life span is a non-sequitur, and if I supply the missing link in
   your argument and assume you meant that the increase in life span
   is due to reduced exposure to pollutants, you're still missing the
   boat.  Probably the largest contributors to increased longevity are
   antibiotics, improved awareness of hygeine, improved nutrition, and
   improved access to health care.  Industry may claim any or all of
   these as its accomplishments--they have nothing to do with pollution.

|The optimum solution to pollution is usually more technology.  Simply
|by living in a house we remove dust and other airborne aerosols from
|our immediate environment.  Switching from a 1000-megawatt coal-burning
|plant to an equivalent size nuclear plant reduces the plant waste from
|3 million tons to 50 tons of waste per year (Dixy Lee Ray, 1990,
|Trashing The Planet, p. 134.)

   Your house example is ridiculous.
   I am sure that wearing an isolation suit (a product of industry) would
   greatly reduce my exposure to all sorts of natural and manmade
   pollutants.  If the production of isolation suits for every member
   of the population so polluted the air that we were all forced to
   wear them, would industry have "reduced" the level of pollution?

   Your coal/nuclear example is laughable.  Direct comparison of gross
   tonnage of waste is meaningless.  Would you rather have me dump a
   ton of carbon dioxide into your town's air or an ounce of plutonium
   into its water supply?

|However, let's suppose for some reason, other than government regulatory
|restrictions, a switchover to nuclear is not feasible.  Or, alterna-
|tively, most of a region's air pollution is from automobiles rather
|than heavy industry such as coal-burning power plants.  In this case,
|continued population growth and the associated air pollution could
|have a net affect on some people.  To prevent this, property rights
|need to be established for air.
|
|The Father of Property Rights
|
|John Locke is properly considered the father of property rights.  In the
|17th century, he defined two key concepts underlying property ownership:
|exclusivity and transferability.  He noted that until there is a demand
|for a resource, it belongs to the "commons."  Locke realized that people
|who find or develop new resources must develop a method to exclude their
|newly claimed property from the commons.  In the case of land exclusiv-
|ity, it could be established by fencing the property.  Transferability,
|allows owners to trade their property.  This is often facilitated
|through the use of legal contracts.
|
|An additional feature of ownership is, of course, liability.  When we
|use or sell our property, we must not infringe upon the rights of
|others.  For instance, if a piece of machinery malfunctions and injures
|someone during normal useage the equipment manufacturer can be held
|liable for the injury.
|
|Now we have a framework from which we can apply property rights to air.
|To apply exclusivity, we define rights for those aspects of air that
|are in demand, such as ozone concentrations, VOCs, etc.  With adequate
|foresight, the new owners of an undeveloped area could stipulate air
|rights prior to the start of development.  In already developed areas,
|one method for initiating a market for air rights is an auction.

   How does this contribute to your argument at all?
   You describe Lockean exclusivity as fencing in the land.  How
   can you fence in the air, short of building a giant bubble over
   your land?  It does not suffice to say that someone has exclusive
   rights over the air if what air he has rights over cannot be defined,
   pointed to, and tested to see whether it is in fact the air referred
   to in the grant of rights.  Likewise, how can he transfer those rights
   if the identity of the air is unproveable?

|Initiating the Market for Air
|
|To initiate the market for property rights a limited government
|presence is appropriate.  In a free society, government's function is to
|protect individual rights.  If the rate of growth of an area proceeds
|ahead of the evolution of the appropriate property rights, some
|individuals may have their rights infringed.  Without the stipulation
|of rights, people can use a resource without being fully liable for
|their actions.  The government, by initiating the auction, in this
|limited context, is taking action to prevent rights violations.

   This is a wonderful piece of generic
   justification.  How do you keep anyone from using it to involve the
   government in auctioning off "rights" to practically any new thing
   they cook up?

|For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that a few large companies
|purchase the available air rights for the area.  At this juncture, the
|the rights (exclusivity) and liability belong to those companies.
|These companies can, in turn, sell (transfer) those rights in the form
|of effluent fees or permits.  (The same principles apply if a large
|number of individuals or companies purchase the air rights.  The
|difference is that the legal contractual arrangements will become more
|complicated.)
|
|Let's use VOCs as an example.  A company owning rights to VOCs can add
|or subtract VOCs so long as there is no harm to others or their prop-
|erty.  The owner needs to understand the nature of his property in order
|to dispose of it responsibly.  In the case of air, this probably means
|conducting some sort of scientific investigation to understand the local
|physical and chemical reactions that affect VOC concentrations.  The
|owner needs this knowledge to know what levels of VOC effluents are
|safe.  Knowing this he can use the resource responsibly and thereby
|avoid liability problems.
|
|Using this knowledge, the owner can assess an effluent fee to individu-
|als wishing to purchase access to this resource.  If the fee is too
|low, effluents in an area may become too high and as a result human
|health may be adversely affected.  This would cause the owner incur
|liability.  His potential liability, therefore, provides the appropri-
|ate motivation for him to maintain a monitoring program and optimize
|the fee.
|
|Transferability of the air rights can be accomplished by several
|methods.  For mobile sources of VOCs, (automobiles, etc.) access to
|the resource (transfer) can be accomplished by a highway toll.  For
|stationary sources, businesses can be metered as with utilities.
|
|Market competition would insure that fair fees are charged for the air
|rights.  Overcharging would make a company vulnerable to competitive
|pressures, such as corporate buyouts, as with any other type of
|business.
|
|This approach is flexible and open-ended, as is the case in any free
|market.  For example, highway tolls may work well in areas of high
|density but not in those of low density.  Or, nature's pollution
|contributions in a certain area may far exceed man's and rates could
|be lowered accordingly.  The participants in the air market would
|determine how best to buy and sell the rights, as with any other
|commodity in the free market.
|
|In other instances, the government would need to intercede to provide
|further definition to the property rights of the parties involved.  For
|instance, during monitoring, new chemical reactions might be discovered
|which indicate one owner's effluent is reacting with another owner's
|effluent, thereby necessitating redefinition of their respective air
|property liability.

   Do air rights include the right to breathe in the air?  Does this
   mean that, if I don't buy some air rights at the initial auction that
   I have to pay whoever does for the privilege of continuing to breathe?
   Do I further have to pay for the right to exhale carbon dioxide and
   water vapor?  (Not to mention the methane I tend to produce elsewhere,
   particularly after eating cabbage.)

   Or do you intend to recognize only the right to degrade the quality
   of the air?  This is comparable to saying "Everyone has the right
   to sit in this room, but only you have the right to dump your
   garbage there."  Now at first blush that seems OK, because the level
   of garbage dumping is regulated to one that doesn't cause undue
   harm, and we've established who has a legitimate claim to dumping,
   so everyone doesn't go dumping just a little bit that adds up to too
   much.  So far so good.  But the air is not a room--it is a combination
   of gases and suspended matter that is in constant motion, and
   subject to diffusion.  If I release a ton of carbon dioxide over my
   property, it does not stay over my property, it blows around and
   diffuses until it is a tiny moiety of the air everywhere.  So no one
   has the choice to sit in another room, or to dump their garbage in
   another room--there is only one atmosphere.  Once again, this is the
   question of exclusivity:  how do you propose to define what air a
   given person has the rights to pollute?

|The Moral Case for Air Rights
|
|Decisions pertaining to the disposal of property are complex.  Evalu-
|ation of an action's costs vs. benefits require individual judgement.  A
|government agency can never know the values and specific context that an
|individual considers when making a judgement.  As a result, when the
|government mandates controls it must rely on force to uphold them.  But
|force is not a valid substitute for individual judgement.  This contra-
|diction is the source of the economic inefficiencies associated with
|controls.  The Clean Air Act is one more example of this principle
|failing to work in practice.
|
|This is why government needs to be restricted to the principle of
|preventing the use of force in human relationships.  Market forces can
|flourish when property rights are well defined.  In cases where property
|rights are infringed an impartial arbiter, i.e., the government, is
|needed.  [Private arbitration and/or mediation may also prove useful -Mark]
|
|As I indicated in my opening remarks, FME will challenge the idea that
|the environment is a value apart from its relation to human well being.
|This idea is the fundamental moral principle underlying the environ-
|mental movement.  (George Reisman, "The Toxicity of Environmentalism,"
|1990, The Jefferson School of Philosophy, Economics, and Psychology.)
|
|An alternate moral outlook was developed by Ayn Rand.  Her ethical
|system is founded on the principle that human beings must pursue values
|to sustain life.  In her system, nature is a value only in relation to
|human life.  In evaluating the facts of nature, man considers the
|conditions of his life, and then places a value on nature.  Depending
|on his context, he may want to keep it in its natural state, or pave it
|over with a four-lane highway.
|
|What do these moral outlooks have to do with air pollution?  Rand's
|system gives a theoretical grounding for dealing with uncertainty in air
|pollution issues.  Nature does not provide us with automatic knowledge
|of how to pursue our values.  We are not programmed like animals.  No
|one knows all of the chemical and physical parameters and reactions
|that occur in the atmosphere.  The EPA has proven that by the fact that
|when VOCs emissions were reduced ozone levels increased.  Yet, it is in
|our nature to continue to try to improve the conditions of our lives,
|which in turn means the use of industry with its associated air efflu-
|ents.

   How does the VOC/ozone red herring prove anything?

|Earlier is was stated that monitoring of urban areas would be necessary
|to establish appropriate levels of effluent.  Deciding the level and
|extent of monitoring is a complex issue.  Liability gives incentives
|for implementing a monitoring program.  Anyone who disposes of their
|property, in this case an air effluent, must be responsible for it.
|But at a certain point, the costs of monitoring outweigh their benefit.
|Does the owner monitor every street, or every other street, or every
|1000 feet, etc.?
|
|Eventually the owner must decide on a level of monitoring considering
|the relevant, available facts.  If private property rights for air
|becomes a possibility, environmentalists will undoubtedly challenge it
|by claiming that no one can know for certain what will happen in the
|atmosphere.  And they will be right.  This is where Rand's principle of
|acting to sustain life, even in the face of uncertainty, must be invok-
|ed.  It allows industry and the owners of air effluent rights to act on
|the knowledge they have.  They will be innocent until proven guilty.  It
|will be up to the environmentalists to prove that certain levels of
|effluent are harmful.

   If positive harm must be shown to prove the danger of a given effluent,
   how will emissions of compounds thought likely to be slow-acting
   carcinogens be controlled?  By the time a substantial number of
   cancer cases can be linked to a specific compound in demonstrable
   environmental concentrations, an entire generation will have been
   exposed--and presumably, this burden of proof will be resumed
   afresh for each additional compound with a slight variation in
   structure.

|Fortunately, there is a historical practice to support this theory:
|namely, the +200 years of industrial development that have occurred
|since the industrial revolution.  People in technologically advanced
|countries live longer at a higher standard of living than nonindustrial-
|ized countries.  Pollution reduction is possible by using higher levels
|of technology.  These are facts, and when we combine them with Rand's
|moral outlook we have a supporting theory.  In other words, property
|rights for air is the appropriate approach based on theory and practice.

   I am incapable of detecting any logical connectedness in this
   paragraph.  You don't seriously think you're arguing for anything
   here?

|Summary
|
|To develop a comprehensive case for air rights we need both a theoreti-
|cal basis and practial application.  The theory rests on the idea that
|values are rooted in life and the environment is a value only in
|relation to human life.  This idea frees us to use the environment even
|though there is a level of uncertainty involved in our actions.  In
|order to prevent one person's actions from infringing on another's,
|the principle of property rights must be applied.  Government's
|function is to uphold the institution of property rights and arbitrate
|disputes over their boundaries.  The use of property rights allows for
|a free market for the use of effluents in air.  Air rights are
|economically efficient because they are based on property rights which
|allow individual choice in the market.

   What support do you have for the assertion that government's
   function is to uphold the institution of property rights?  How is
   it a more valid function of government to protect an individual's
   "right" to pollute, provided he paid for the right, over another
   individual's "right" to breathe air free of contaminants than it is
   for the same government to restrict an individual's "right" to
   pollute a common resource, the atmosphere?  Why should I care if
   air rights are economically efficient--is economic efficiency the
   premier, or only, measure of justice?

|Reproduction is permitted for the purpose of bringing the views of FME
|to new readers, so long as copies do not serve as a continuous unpaid
|subscription to the recipient.

   Reproduction of my comments is hereby permitted for the purpose
   of improving the quality of rhetoric among readers of FME. :)

|Copyright: The Free Market Environmantalist
|1572D Sycamore Ave., Box  329, Hercules, CA 94547
|Mike Gemmell - Editor/Publisher
|Subscriptions $48/year, single issues $4.50

  "Some people don't know shit about the air. . .
   Air can hurt you too."

   -David Byrne, "Air", from The Talking Heads FEAR OF MUSIC


-- 
--Fred, or another blind 8th-century BC  |  sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com
        Hellenic poet of the same name.  |
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