My wife tells me I’m 天の邪鬼, meaning I go out of my way to be strange or not conform. Perhaps from a Japanese perspective I am. Maybe she’s right. All I know is I’ve resisted every temptation to blog about the spill. What can be said about it that hasn’t been said? Well, I have come to realize that it’s time to conform and give my two cents, though it may take wading through everyone and their dog’s opinion to find the gem that is mine. The real injustice I’m seeing, the reason I must write, is that, by the very nature of environmental catastrophes and our system, it’s impossible for all those affected to be duly compromised for damages done to them as well as for damages done to non-humans (turtles, manatees) to be duly punished, but I’ll defer the issue about critters for now.

Am I on crazy pills? Everyone I know misses that he's obviously a sea sponge made out to look like a household sponge. It's called artistic license!

Many people say that the best salve for environmental issues is strict enforcement of property rights with activists legally assisting those affected by pollution, etc. It’s worth a try as state environmentalism causes people who otherwise would want to do their part to protect the planet to instead resent the whole movement and feel as if it were forced upon them*. If our system was just, it should be possible for everyone along the gulf coast (and not just in America, but even in other islands sufficiently close to be affected) to do a class-action lawsuit against BP and actually get compensated for the damages. If BP truly believed this was possible, they would have made sure no one cut any corners in meeting safety regulations or, in the absence of safety regulations, would probably have paid to develop their own. Experience tells us that instead of this happening, the rabid pragmatists in our legal system won’t allow for a company that’s an important part of the economy to be utterly destroyed by mere tort. Exxon managed to delay and delay having to pay and managed to get only a slap on the wrist in the end, despite decimating an entire community and doing untold damages to wildlife. Even the ship is alive and well, living on as the the Dong Fang Ocean. This, however isn’t the bigger problem since it’s “simply” a matter of not having a state that claims to act in the interests of the people, but instead acts in the interests of the bureaucrats’ friends. No, the bigger problem is that cases like this amount to such a tiny fraction of the depreciation of natural resources. Wetlands, for example, that make up the invisible bedrock to our economy by performing services we’d pay as much as necessary to get if it wasn’t free, are being nickel and dimed to oblivion by numerous polluters and it’s affects are divided equally by everyone in the vicinity.

You may own a piece of property and essentially do with it as you wish, but on what grounds can you be said to own the air above it or the water below it? These things are passing through and as you use and abuse these things, you automatically damage everyone else’s property. Everyone’s part of the burden is sufficiently small that it’s not worth it for them to seek damages. If that alone were the problem, I think we would have a problem that everyone can live with. Of course the market is going to have negative externalities and if it’s sufficiently minor, there’s no need to bother addressing it. However, not just what I do on my property to the air, but what every single manufacturer contributes to the air adds up to something that harms peoples’ health and destroys the beauty of un”improved” land. Though I said I’ll defer the issue, let’s not forget what we do to creatures who no doubt can suffer, but lack the ability to legally defend themselves. To such situations, I propose an alternative.

Earlier, I blogged about my idea of EcoTax, which turns out to be very similar to Henry George’s idea, though with important differences. I’ll post later with an updated version of my idea, but to summarize, I propose as a practical alternative to numerous mini-torts the government** having an alternate plan for companies (or individuals – a company is just a bunch of individuals) that must pollute as part of their operations. For such companies, they can opt to, instead of being subject to numerous torts, which they will then be forced to actually pay up on, they can simply pay in proportion to how much they pollute, and the funds shared with everyone. This will make it cost to pollute and it will make products that carry a heavier eco-burden to reflect more accurately their ecological costs. The market, which is to say, the creativity of everyone working together, will then work towards solving ecological problems in a bottom-up way, instead of us hoping that the commands from a distant bureaucracy, funded and controlled by elites is the right one, as it would be the one we’ll all be stuck with. Furthermore, it will let people have their freedom to live as they choose rather than a specific brand of green living forced on them.

** The government or whatever legal order(s) there may be. My basic idea is perfectly compatible with a libertarian society. It doesn’t need an army to prop it up!