Environmental Justice, External Costs, Cost-Benefit Analysis and The Story of Broke
Summary-AVID Article Format
Environmental Justice
- Environmental laws making pollution less apparent, but people still inhabit the dirtiest areas
- Environmental Justice movement; ensures low-income people are not treated environmentally unfairly
- Why is pollution more in low income areas, latino communities? Land may be cheap for industry, less political resistance
- More research must be made before everyone is equal in terms of environmental cleanliness
External Costs
- If a company can reduce costs by dumping waste, then a company will do so
- Negative effects = External Costs, costs not factored or considered
- Social Cost is external costs plus supply cost, market price is higher
- Tax can be used to limit pollution and increase revenue for pollution research and mitigation
Cost-Benefit Analysis
- Technology cannot achieve low pollution at a reasonable economic level
- Must determine cost efficient and beneficial level of pollution
- Social cost must meet social benefit to achieve most beneficial pollution levels
- Benefits both industry and environment in equal ways
The Story of Broke
- People must hold back on spending, and taxes are being used for "nothing", nation is broke
- Tax money goes to military, $726 bil; obsolete, backwards economy fueled by subsidies, to bad business
- Tax subsidies allow huge companies to "skip" taxes despite success
- Freebie subsidies, government gifts never seen by the public
- Externalized costs - damage that isn't factored
- Companies and industry taking subsidies and leaving none for the public
- We can redirect subsidies to us, by taking action
- Investing in alternative energy would save money, industry should be responsible for waste cleanup instead of dumping
- New jobs made by less pollution, waste; abandon dinosaur economy
Summary
Pollution has become more and more apparent in the past years, and many blame pollution and lack of subsidies on industries that do not take responsibility for their waste and their wasted capital. While the higher-class can enjoy cleaner air and subsidies, lower-income citizens are more exposed to pollution due to increased industry in low-income areas and a lack of monitoring externalized costs. In order to fix this, experts recommend a cost-benefit analysis in order to calculate the most optimal performance for industries. People also suggest protest, in order to allocate subsidies to the people, rather than industries.
Reflection
How could industries be the root cause of all of these problems? It is hard to believe, but I still think that these methods to limiting pollution (taxes, policies, laws, protest) could definitely fix these problems if enforced strongly enough. People argue that companies may ignore these taxes on pollution, but if the taxes are steep (e.g. 60% of all profits in the fiscal year) than I think that businesses will refrain from excessively polluting kind of like data plans. This all wouldn't happen, however, without awareness (like all other problems), and activists should speak up and spread their knowledge to educate the public.