>Why not just let the market handle things? Unpriced externalities represent a huge market failure. Respiratory illness, floods and droughts due to climate cha

>Why not just let the market handle things? Unpriced externalities represent a huge market failure. Respiratory illness, floods and droughts due to climate change, resource wars in the middle east. Fossil fuels impose a cost on other people that is not priced in. Gasoline is cheap like dumping toxic waste in a river is cheap. You pass the real costs on to some schmuck downstream. You could put a tax on dumping toxic waste in rivers. You could establish some kind of toxic waste credits scheme, where dumpers of toxic waste buy credits from people who clean it up. Most of us would agree that the more sensible option is simply to ban the dumping of toxic waste. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/our-energy-choices/coal-and-other-fossil-fuels/hidden-cost-of-fossils http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/our-energy-choices/coal-a...