2 ms·
Good point. It's always either protect the environment and lose jobs or get into a trade war and lose jobs, or don't protect the environment. But what if we tr
by biohacker42 17y ago
Good point. It's always either protect the environment and lose jobs or get into a trade war and lose jobs, or don't protect the environment.
But what if we treat pollution the way we approach transportation and other infrastructure?
Here's what I mean, we don't make FedEx pay for all the roads and bridges it uses. The public pays for it, we all use it, everybody's better off.
So why doesn't the public pay for CO2 scrubbers and capture, and waste water treatment and etc?
Obviously there's great danger of back door subsidies and corruption and that might lead to trade wars. Doing it right wouldn't be easy, but surely it's better then the choice of jobs vs. clean air?
- cwan 17y agoGreat idea. It's not so much treating pollution the way we approach transportation/infrastructure as it is changing the way we approach transportation/infrastructure. While the technology would have made it impractical to implement, why wouldn't we but electronic tolling on all roads on a pay per use basis? We could even privatize most of them. The whole reason we have urban sprawl is because highways have been underpriced. One great example is Hong Kong's MTR system that charges you based on where you started in the system and where you got off. Incredibly convenient and efficient. Heck, even China tolls practically all its highways. That said I'm not sure this type of stuff will help us get out of a recession but at least it makes people pay for the services that they use. We may even get better roads and highways out of it if the owners of the roads (be they governments or otherwise) are incentivized by the revenues from them because they'd be better tracked.
- biohacker42 17y agoI believe France relies heavily on private bridges, like here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_bridge