A property-based solution towards climate change

Posted by davidmcnab 10 years, 2 months ago to Business
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There will be diverse opinions within this group as to whether we are undergoing serious climate change, the effect that any such climate change may have on human activity, and the extent to which past and present human activity may be contributing to climate change (if even at all).

In this context, one can speculate on a solution based on taking privatisation to the next level. Arguably, the first product of nature to become the subject of property rights was land. One of the main issues for inter-tribe relations was territorial boundaries. As eastern and western societies evolved, land property rights were refined to the level of family, then individual.

However, despite the vast quantum leaps we have made in property rights (there is even a patent on the "business concept" of cutting crusts off sandwiches before serving them), other natural resources critical to human welfare remain in communal possession, which could arguably be blamed for our current climate issues.

Maybe it's time for climate-related resources to catch up with human civilisation and join land and water in the inventory of privately held assets. If the sun were floated as a publicly traded company, then the company Sun Inc could charge for solar radiation by the megajoule. Farmers benefiting from sunlight in growing their crops would have to pay. Ditto for people and companies generating solar electricity. Sun Inc would have legal liability, however, for adverse solar events such as sunspots causing interference to electronic communications.

Similarly, the atmosphere can be floated as well. Users of atmospheric resources such as oxygen would need to open accounts with Atmosphere Inc, and pay for every breath. People who fall into arrears would have their atmospheric breathing rights cut off, and would be required to source their oxygen from elsewhere.

On the other hand, Atmosphere Inc would have legal accountability for atmosphere-related natural disasters such as tornados and hurricanes, and would be incentivised to research technologies for reducing or eliminating these occurrences. Conversely, Atmosphere Inc would be able to control who emits what into the atmosphere, and charge according to substances and amounts. They could charge individuals for carbon dioxide exhalations, for vehicle emissions as well.

The concept of international waters need to be brought up to date with today's property rights advances, and placed into private ownership as well. Oceans Inc would own all waters not within respective nations' economic zones.

Between Sun Inc, Atmosphere Inc and Oceans Inc, there would be robust private ownership and management of critical resources. They would enjoy substantial revenue benefits, but also need to mitigate their legal liability. Insurance contracts would drop any "act of God" clauses, and instead budget in the costs of suing these three companies instead. This would be the new era in advanced privatisation, taking these crucial resources out of the hands of looter governments and putting them safely into private hands where they belong.


All Comments

  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 2 months ago
    I want in on the Sun Inc. business;;; it's the least
    likely to be driven into bankruptcy by lawsuits....... -- j

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  • Posted by plusaf 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Spot on, OA... and davidmcnab, would the concept fly if it were historically back-tested?

    Let's apply it to the Little Ice Age and the multiple major Ice Ages... what would who do to whom in those eras to ameliorate the effects or punish the perpetrators?

    :)
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  • Posted by 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    EXACTLY!!
    Now - this is critical to the whole objectivist philosophy: Is Monsanto just a successful biotech firm legitimately pursuing a strategy to generate better returns for its shareholders? Or is it worse than a thousand James Taggarts?

    Should farmers affected by bee declines have ability to sue?

    And how can affected parties sue when the cause/effect relationships can be blurred for decades, and the damage done before ultimate proof can be produced?

    So ironic that Ayn Rand, herself such a staunch defender of capitalism, died from tobacco companies furthering their profit by obfuscating the scientific evidence of the link between smoking and cancer - a link first discovered in the 1920s.
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  • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 10 years, 2 months ago
    Hello davidmcnab,
    I regret that I cannot buy into this scheme. First of all I do not believe man is capable of countering natural climate change. Secondly I do not believe anyone can own the air, the sunlight or the oceans. "Locke established that private property is absolutely essential for liberty: “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” He continues: “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property. Locke believed people legitimately turned common property into private property by mixing their labor with it, improving it." No man has the capacity to improve these natural resources through his labor let alone control distribution.

    Now if your private property is harmed because of someone else's pollution... say for example someone upstream from you dumps toxins in a stream that runs through or along your property then you have legal recourse.

    Aren't we already taxed and regulated enough already? Where does it stop? Will we next charge for the space one occupies?
    Sorry, I just don't see it.
    Respectfully,
    O.A.
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  • Posted by 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It's still based on a pre-existing practice with simple embellishments. Hardly a profound act of "invention" and, in my opinion, hardly worthy of granting a decades-long legal monopoly.

    Anyway, that leads me into a more specialised property rights discussion relating to patents, which demands starting a new thread..
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  • Posted by Stormi 10 years, 2 months ago
    We do not need some group controlling the sun, we already have Al Gore selling carbon credits at great profit, and he is a private citizen. We do not need more of that. It is bad enough Congress in the past couple years declared the air belongs to the government. They are going after water, which they also think they own, except for the giant aquifer the Bush family owns down near Paraguay. Keep it simple, keep it local, as much as possible, and keep government and giant control agents out of it.
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  • Posted by 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    What do you think, then, of a cafe being able to patent a "business method", the practice of cutting the crusts off sandwiches prior to service, and sue or demand royalties from any other eatery which does the same? Despite the fact that this cafe didn't invent the method, and that this method has been commonly practised for years beforehand?
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  • Posted by Temlakos 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Difficult such enforcement might be. But if you want to encourage people to do something, give them some skin in the game and declare it rightfully theirs.

    Remember what Rand said about invention being the first profession to go when a society slides toward mindless savagery?
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  • Posted by 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Definitely not sarcasm. But it is an exploration of some of the bolder frontiers of private property. To some cultures, even to this day, the concept of private individual ownership of land is unthinkable, yet our culture(s) have accepted it for centuries as normal and right.
    On a darker note, Monsanto is pushing to own all global crop production at an IP level, by pushing for laws against heirloom seed cultivation across numerous jurisdictions. They are also heavily promoting herbicide and pesticide products which threaten honey bee populations (which, of course, would give Monsanto the kind of monopoly advantage James Taggart was seeking when he got his Washington buddies to crush the Phoenix Durango line). Private ownership of global biomass, such as bees, would empower a company to push back against this.
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  • Posted by 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Temlakos you raise a good point. But this brings the discussion into similar territory to some forms of intellectual property, such as patents on software algorithms, where enforcement is extremely difficult.
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  • Posted by Kilroy 10 years, 2 months ago
    Paying for air:
    While not as advanced as the author of the piece above envisions, places like California and others charge people a tax on the air. The agency that does this is the Air Quality Management District (AQMD).

    Paying for water:
    If you use city water you know you are paying for water, but did you know that places like Denver have a tax for the rain water that runs off your property?

    Needless to say that if there is something to be taxed, a politician will figure out a way to tax it.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Upstream as well can be applied. For example the Wild and Scenic designation is applied to all waters geo-contiguous to the designated area. including ground water and seepage.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 10 years, 2 months ago
    Question? Are they stock companies? And would there be pollution credits and if so could the stock holders sell their share of the pollution credits for big bucks? Having sold their share would the corporation and/;or the stock holders lose the liability for polluting?

    Absolutely non serious paragraph. Short answer is ''just like today?"

    Here's where a serious smiley face should go.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I can actually visualize that toothy smile swelling between his space alien ears.
    OMG! Look out! His lips are about to move!
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 10 years, 2 months ago
    I already own the atmosphere I breathe.
    Plants own the carbon dioxide I exhale.
    Maybe old dino is too much the simple fossil here.
    Now I'm stream of consciousness thinking of corporations taking over the world in SYFY flicks.
    This is all silly stuff.
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  • Posted by dbhalling 10 years, 2 months ago
    This only makes sense if there is science behind the idea and there is not.
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  • Posted by wiggys 10 years, 2 months ago
    don't show this to 0 as he will want to nationalize it.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 2 months ago
    If one is going to take responsibility, it also means that they have control over the suggested medium to such a degree that reasonable responsibility can be inferred and therefore outcomes can be reasonably predicted and controlled.

    I think we're still several million years away from anything close to what you are suggesting.
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  • Posted by dukem 10 years, 2 months ago
    Regarding the issue of climate change, I am currently reading and greatly enjoying (and learning from) the newly released book "Climate Change: The Facts." Very worthwhile reading, quite challenging, and should put an end to the climate change idiocy if only people would read it and understand it.
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  • Posted by jhthurman 10 years, 2 months ago
    Freedom and property rights go hand-in-hand. It's very telling that we're seeing a simultaneous erosion of both in modern America. Very telling indeed.

    As far as anthropomorphic global warming, that whole hoax has been thoroughly exposed so anyone who still adheres to it is either part of that "industry" and making money off it, or has simply failed to do their homework.

    If you look back approximately 10-15 thousand years, the whole northern hemisphere was nearly covered with ice. Somehow, that ice melted...and as far as we know, there were no cars, planes, factories, or any other technology belching out so-called greenhouse gases. The warming and cooling is clearly part of a long-term cycle related to activity on the Sun...not puny humans spewing pollution.
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