I get what you're saying, I really do. But I think we're all here in favor of economic development and continuing progress. What we disagree on is the approach. The small economic cost incurred by sound environmental regulations or grass root cultural embrace of environmental values is well worth it. Principles of individual choice and whathaveyou are well and good. But why not try to steer those choices toward positive and beneficial values and outcomes? The argument that things will just work themselves out surely can apply just as well to economic development as it would to environmental awareness!
The problem is we don't have sound environmental regulations. We have bat **** crazy legislation that at times is almost impossible to understand and can actually do more environmental harm than good. Proper legislation waits for feasible technology to come along and then we enact it. Doing it in reverse is a tool for big business to make an *** load of money off of us while not having much of an impact, if not a negative impact.
You think my preference to wait and let technology fix things is Pollyanna-ish, but that's exactly what has cleaned up our issues in the past. Vehicle emissions for NOx have been reduced 99% from the first standard. That's without calculating the reduction from the unregulated vehicles to the first standard. We didn't force these onto the manufacturers even though we take face time when the legislation get updated. Detroit progresses and tells us what standards they can meet and then we write a law.
The same goes for power plants. The new gas plants are incredibly low emitting. A massive plant down from about 25,000 tons per year of NOx to a negligible 400. Similar with CO, particluates, etc. Many coal plants no longer landfill ash as it's sold off to build roads. That displaces pollution from huge engine driven kiln lime manufacturing plants.
There are already economic incentives for regulated industry to innovate: higher revenues and an edge on the competition. Let 'em innovate and then pass a law. At the end of the day that's about the only thing that makes a difference. The rest of the stuff, the government campaigns and whatnot are like swatting at flies in a landfill.
If you don't want plastics going out to sea there is a simple solution. Ban it. They'll have to go somewhere, which will get expensive, and people will choose to waste less or pay the costs to recycle more.
I think you're mixing up two different things. Developed countries take better care of their own back yards, but that does not mean they're tackling the global effects of human development. Dumping millions of tons of plastic waste into the ocean makes for cleaner streets, but it is disastrous for the ocean environment, which make up the vast majority of living space on Earth. And while we don't have horse manure covered streets anymore, we do have power plants that dump astonishing amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere. You can make the argument that China is even more polluting due to their lower level of development, and you would be correct. But the fact that China will eventually clean up its own back yard does not negate the fact that they are contributing significantly to global pollution and climate change compared to their pre-development. Hell, even low-orbit is getting so polluted that it puts future missions in jeopardy. Again, that is not related to keeping your streets litter free.
I'm not a global policy maker and there's nothing I can do to change anything in somebody else's backyard. Besides, the world survived us so I think it will survive China just fine. This time around it has the added advantage that we already showed China how to do it so they have low hanging fruit to copy.
At home, we're clean enough. If you want any more from me then raise my costs and I'll adjust accordingly. Raising the gas tax would be the best place to start. It's simple solutions like that that work. Convincing a small portion of the population to splurge on solar power isn't going to make a dent.
