| I suggest you to read up on how the alternatives to free-market capitalism have performed in environmental protection before pinning your hopes on them. I was born and lived in the USSR. Since everything was state-owned and natural resources were allocated, not bought and sold and taxed, there was no incentive to use them efficiently. The result was horrible pollution everywhere, the like we see in modern-day China. The famous commie blocks, for example, had no insulation nor ventilation to speak of. Instead, everyone were expected to keep a small window[1] open (even in winter) to ventilate, and the tremendous heat loss was compensated by 30-50% higher fuel consumption. Since it didn't have a price tag, wastage wasn't an issue. You couldn't save money by insulationg your home, because heating prices were artificial and unrelated to consumption. No-one else in the chain had any incentive to improve anything either, because that wouldn't have improved profit margins or anything else of that sort. Their wages were also fixed and unrelated to performance. Eventually this led to environmental revolt, which was one of the drivers of USSR's collapse. Chernobyl and its coverup played a vital part in general disillusionment. The country was turning into an industrial wasteland before everyone's eyes. Go ahead, do the same. Give Exxon oil fields for free, force people to work for them at artificial and undervalued wages[2], abolish pollution and all other taxes, close all competing oil companies[3], and jail every critic of your plan[4]. Surely that will work. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortochka [2] It was a crime to be unemployed. People were assigned to jobs when they finished school. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism_(social_offense) [3] Motherland needs only one. [4] They must be insane to doubt you. Lock them up in a mental hospital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_... |
Thankfully we have a third way, mixed economies that internalize externalities so that people and firms are incentivized to make correct environmental decisions. There’s a reason nearly every economist favors Pigovian solutions like carbon taxes for the environment. Governments can apply the same rules to themselves.
Companies are just centrally planned governments that haven’t reached scale yet. We heap scorn on Five Year Plans when governments do them, but firms (especially in limited competition) create five year plans all the time, sometimes with just as disastrous results as Mao.