Why is pro-pollution considered a free market position?

[Polk]

Can anyone answer that. What gives coal and oil producers the right to pollute other people's air?

 

[Zander]

Nobody wants to drink dirty water or breathe poisoned air, but everyone wants to drive their car and enjoy air conditioning and heat. It's an economic balancing act.

 

[Polk]

Nobody wants to drink dirty water or breathe poisoned air, but everyone wants to drive their car and enjoy air conditioning and heat. It's an economic balancing act.

Sure, but any time anyone has suggested we limit any form of pollution, that claim has been that it means the end of the freedom. Without getting into contemporary debates about cap-and-trade and the like, look at the passage the Clean Air Act or the implementation of the EPA's Acid Rain Program.

 

[Zander]

Nobody wants to drink dirty water or breathe poisoned air, but everyone wants to drive their car and enjoy air conditioning and heat. It's an economic balancing act.

Sure, but any time anyone has suggested we limit any form of pollution, that claim has been that it means the end of the freedom. Without getting into contemporary debates about cap-and-trade and the like, look at the passage the Clean Air Act or the implementation of the EPA's Acid Rain Program.

I know that the Clean Air act was passed over 40 year ago, and the Acid Rain Program started about 20 years ago. Both programs had detractors at the time, but the laws were eventually passed and the programs implemented. We have cleaner air and water as a result. I think the USA generally does the right thing on the environment - as long as the legislation is not fundamentally flawed.

 

[manifold]

If corporations are not free to contaminate waterways and polute the air, are any of us really free?

 

[manifold]

But seriously, anti-regulation is the free market position. Always has been always will be. But this is one example where the free market, left to it's own devices, fails everyone.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Can anyone answer that. What gives coal and oil producers the right to pollute other people's air?

Tell you what.

Why don't you start by pointing me to a pro pollution promoter and we will talk. Until then, you are just another idiot.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

But seriously, anti-regulation is the free market position. Always has been always will be. But this is one example where the free market, left to it's own devices, fails everyone.

Good to see you are your normal, irrational, self.

 

[uscitizen]

We need to pollute just as much as China so we can compete with them.

 

[manifold]

But seriously, anti-regulation is the free market position. Always has been always will be. But this is one example where the free market, left to it's own devices, fails everyone.

Good to see you are your normal, irrational, self.

Which part is irrational?

The part about anti-regulation being the free market position? Um, no. That's more or less the definition of the 'free market'. But don't take my word for it, go read 'Capitalism and Freedom' by Milton Friedman. A good read with a lot of good arguments actually.

Or the part about the free market failing to adequately keep pollution in check? Um no. The evidence on that one proves it to be a slam dunk.

Sorry, not only is it rational, it's fact.

 

[del]

If corporations are not free to contaminate waterways and polute the air, are any of us really free?

just the terrorists

 

[Dot Com]

Can anyone answer that. What gives coal and oil producers the right to pollute other people's air?

Agreed. What about MY freedom to breathe clean air and have access to clean water?

 

[del]

Can anyone answer that. What gives coal and oil producers the right to pollute other people's air?

Agreed. What about MY freedom to breathe clean air and have access to clean water?

what about it?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

But seriously, anti-regulation is the free market position. Always has been always will be. But this is one example where the free market, left to it's own devices, fails everyone.

Good to see you are your normal, irrational, self.

Which part is irrational?

The part about anti-regulation being the free market position? Um, no. That's more or less the definition of the 'free market'. But don't take my word for it, go read 'Capitalism and Freedom' by Milton Friedman. A good read with a lot of good arguments actually.

Or the part about the free market failing to adequately keep pollution in check? Um no. The evidence on that one proves it to be a slam dunk.

Sorry, not only is it rational, it's fact.

The irrational part is your insistence that the free market is going to fail no matter what. One of the most polluted places on the planet is in what used to be the Soviet Union. Because they had no free market at all, the people were not free to protest against, and force the companies that were polluting to respond to them.

On the other hand, companies here in the United States, once the dangers of pollution became clear, were forced to bow to demands to cut back. It is not the free market that fails to protect the environment, it is the government. That makes you position irrational. Some regulations make sense, but most of them just make things worse. Some of them exist just to keep large corporations from having to compete.

 

[blu]

But seriously, anti-regulation is the free market position. Always has been always will be. But this is one example where the free market, left to it's own devices, fails everyone.

yep... forests and clean, fresh water would only be learned about in history books if the government didn't clamp down on it. similarly, many types of tuna, whales, and sharks, would also be gone... i think the buffalo is a good example to learn from

 

[blu]

Can anyone answer that. What gives coal and oil producers the right to pollute other people's air?

Tell you what.

Why don't you start by pointing me to a pro pollution promoter and we will talk. Until then, you are just another idiot.

koch brothers

 

[asterism]

Can anyone answer that. What gives coal and oil producers the right to pollute other people's air?

You don't fart?

 

[American Horse]

Nobody wants to drink dirty water or breathe poisoned air, but everyone wants to drive their car and enjoy air conditioning and heat. It's an economic balancing act.

Sure, but any time anyone has suggested we limit any form of pollution, that claim has been that it means the end of the freedom. Without getting into contemporary debates about cap-and-trade and the like, look at the passage the Clean Air Act or the implementation of the EPA's Acid Rain Program.

That's not what people who are informed say; Informed people realize (and they are members of congress who the media don't give a voice to)...realize that tweeking the technology or the refinements to ever higher extremes goes beyond accrual of real benefits and the costs are too high both economically (the dollar costs passed on) and the costs to employment sometimes, and the people who suffer under those extreme refinements pay a price too.

And it's also done for political reasons ONLY

I remember the last few bills signed by Clinton. One was a bill signed into law that required water standards that imposed impossible costs and conditions on small municipalities, and particularly small administrative or producing units; community sized trailer parks mostly occupied by older folks who could do no better than where they were, and the benefits coming from refining the purity of their water would have force the closing of the community water supply system, forcing people out of housing they'd been able to afford or purchase on their own, and where they'd lived for years.

Bush was advised of this injustice perpetrated by the recent law and undid parts of the enforcement of the law to enable these folks to live out their lives in comfort instead of being dispossessed.

But Clinton had passed the law, not so much because he wanted to clean up the water, but because he knew that Bush would have to undue his dirt work; tamper with it to the outcry from the left who readily believe anything they are told, untested.

The proof for that is in the timing; he had years to do this but asked for it and got it in the final days of his administration, foisting it on Bush; a purely political act, but one that you Polk, I'm pretty sure have been used as a tool to exploit time and again.

This is the poison of of our politics, and it's a sad thing to see it so relentlessly exploited as some "higher or noble calling"

Acid rain? "In 2007, total SO2 emissions were 8.9 million tons, achieving the program's long term goal ahead of the 2010 statutory deadline"

Acid rain

 

[blu]

the whole issue could be solved if private property rights were in-tact as the founders intended.

example:

Let's say I live near a factory that causes the air on my property to become polluted. Using my private property rights (which I actually can't b/c the government stole them), I sue the factory for the cost of the land over the amount of days they polluted it. They are then forced to pay after I prove my case and win. Multiply this by every house in the city polluted and the said company goes out of business quick or cleans up their processes.

unfortunately this cannot happen b/c people are sheep and let the government take away their rights all while defending companies giving them cancer in the name of capitalism

 

[westwall]

But seriously, anti-regulation is the free market position. Always has been always will be. But this is one example where the free market, left to it's own devices, fails everyone.

yep... forests and clean, fresh water would only be learned about in history books if the government didn't clamp down on it. similarly, many types of tuna, whales, and sharks, would also be gone... i think the buffalo is a good example to learn from

Actually the buffalo were saved by a buffalo hunter who realised they were approaching extinction and decided to preserve the remaining animals that he could find, and he did it completely on his own because no one else cared. The same thing happened with the Canada Geese, they too were saved by hunters (that's how Ducks Unlimited was founded)
nobody else cared what happened to them, no scientists or zoologists or the embryonic environmental movement, nope it was the hunters that saved them and the buffalo.