Prompt: Many people believe that companies and individuals should pay to clean up the environment in proportion to the amount of pollution they have produced. Ċ Do you agree or disagree?

Many people argue that companies and individuals should take responsibilities of pollution they produced by paying tax. However, I disagree with the opinion because that can not deter the deterioration of the environment. Ċ First of all, paying extra taxes is not effective even though it seems to have deterrent effects on individuals and companies. Even people raise their awareness of environmental protection, they can rarely make real contributions. For example, Starbucks' customers would buy paper pipers because they regard the paper as a recycled and environment-friendly material. Nonetheless, according to a report by the New York Times in 2019, consuming paper pipers incentivizes the industry of chopping trees, which produces more air pollution and has adverse impacts on reserving animal conservations. Thus, only by virtue of individuals and corporations' efforts can not resolve the pollution issue. Ċ Secondly, environmental problems mainly result from the misconducts of governments. For instance, it can be illustrated by a study by Harvard University in 2015, in which a group compared various statistics on environmental protection effects between Sweden and China. According to the study, though those two countries bear similar levels of the tax rate, Sweden behaviours much better than China on the items of air and water quality, and the frequency of extreme weathers. In other words, governments do not lack enough money to solve environmental deterioration. Therefore, rather than imposing extra taxes on citizens, they should adjust regulations and optimize treatment systems. Ċ To summarize, though taxpayers would be aware of the importance of protecting the environment, it has little impacts. Nevertheless, governments should take effective actions rather than coercing more taxes because they are not in shortages of money.