I understand your argument. While nothing will stop people from polluting, land ownership does encourage people to clean up the unavoidable pollution. Assuming

I understand your argument. While nothing will stop people from polluting, land ownership does encourage people to clean up the unavoidable pollution. Assuming your county's code is enforced. Property owners can get in trouble for leaving trash on their land. It doesn't matter where it came from, if it's on your land, it's your problem. The little bits of trash you find on your property are nothing, volunteers find tons of garbage in the forests, rivers, abandoned or derelict properties that no one owns. You might get annoyed by all the trash the teenagers deposit in your yard, but what you aren't seeing are the massive amounts of garbage they throw in the streets, storm drains, side of the road which tumbles off into rivers and streams. When it's on your land, you see it. When it's not, you don't. Romania had so much garbage that volunteers launched "Let's Do It" http://www.letsdoitworld.org/country/romania http://www.letsdoitworld.org/country/romania a national cleanup campaign where over 200,000 people volunteered to cleanup the forests from illegal dumpings. They planned for 3 weeks, geolocated 6,500 waste piles, and in 24 hours assembled in massive droves to the locations, picked it up in 350,000 full sized black bags and hauled it away. It was the most successful social cleanup campaign in the world at the time and has been done EVERY YEAR. This cleanup effort happens every single year. That's how bad our garbage problem is. - http://www.toonaripost.com/2011/09/green-world/lets-do-it-romania-250000-volunteer-in-country-clean-up http://www.toonaripost.com/2011/09/green-world/lets-do-it-ro... If someone owned the Pacific Ocean it would be in their best interest to protect it. It's fish stocks, it's ecology. If it made money from this ownership it can pay for lawyers, lobbyists, enforcers, representatives, campaigns, tv spots. It could at least try to charge countries a penalty for the garbage that flows in by surveying which country it comes from (garbage is traceable) and how much of it comes in. Contrary to popular belief there are international laws. The US, China, India, and everyone else can't just dump waste into another country's territory (not for free at least). I the Ocean territory were owned, there would at least be someone to sue on behalf of that ocean's interests & protect fisheries when their fish stock become exhausted due to over-fishing. Of course nothing is perfect, but with humans being extreme opportunists, self-regulation is not an option here. And rules can only be made if someone's interested are threatened, and interests are weak if ownership doesn't exist.