Why it is in a Company's Best Interest to Reduce Environmental Waste

[iron81]

Considering I am an Environmental Engineer interested in the legal system, I suppose its about time I weighed in here.

The idea that lawsuits can effectively control pollution in an AC society is silly. First off, it is extremely difficult to sort out which polluter damaged which person. To take a simple example on a case I worked on, a groundwater contaminant plume affected the water supply for a subdivision. In this case, there were 5 or six potential sources for the contaminant and about a hundred homeowners. This was a huge legal nightmare. The case has been running for about 20 years and there is no end in sight.

And this was a simple problem. To tackle the much more complicated tasks of surface water or air pollution, you are talking about thousands of polluters and millions of affected persons. In order to successfully prosecute a lawsuit, each of those persons would need to figure out how much damage each of those polluters inflicted on them and then spend thousands of dollars on lawyers. They would be spending this money to collect a few dollars from each polluter. Imagine a lung cancer patient trying to sue each automobile owner and coal plant operator for their cancer. It would never work, especially since the patient would have a hell of a time proving that the air pollution even caused the cancer. And I am completely skipping the "AC courts suck" argument.

Also, I would point out that the lawsuit option is available under the State. The state has passed various environmental regulations that people can sue under. These statutes often set up systems whereby the process for proving a case is simplified to the point that a person actually has a chance to win and collect enough money to make pursuing the case worthwhile. These provisions would not be in place under AC. If you choose to ignore these statutes because you reject the state, common law nuisance and trespass claims can also be filed against polluters. My point here is that even with these options available, the amount of cleanup that happens as a result of lawsuits is relatively small. Most efforts for environmental cleanup are brought on by regulation.

I would also add that not all environmental costs cause any damage to anyone. Wildlife protection is also a valuable goal. Who is going to sue to protect Spotted Owls, especially if a defendant can prove that the extinction of the owls on a plaintiffs property cost the Plainiff very little money.

I really think that AC claims of environmental protection are the weakest part of AC theory. They would be better off saying "[censored] the environment". I also echo what others have said about businesses being quick to externalize costs by polluting and thinking short term.

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short termism in business is often if not always due to the state.

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I think that this is incorrect as well. My understanding as to why businesses are focused on short term profits is because stockholders demand them and executives get canned if the stock price falls. I'm interested if anyone can come up with a theory why either the state creates this demand or if my assumption is incorrect.