[pfdietz]

What could be needed is internalization of external costs. If you release chemicals that cause problems, charge the polluter, and send the charges to those affected.

On a global scale this breaks down, because governments value the lives of non-citizens orders of magnitude below the lives of their own citizens. The US will spend millions to save one expected life at home; it will avoid spending thousands to save one expected life in a third world country.

[BigGreenJorts]

Polluter pays models are becoming more common. Idk exactly how they function but in Ontario Canada they just switched from a municipal tax funded WM model to a private consortium funded model.

Often the pushback on these "polluter taxes" is that they increase the costs of downstream goods and therefore the consumer pays it anyway, but I think when the link of how the consumer is "already paying" is made clear (as was easy in the case of municipal WM taxes) it's also easier to see how the costs would actually reduce in the long term (bc for "management" this is another line item they can optimize via reduced pollution rather than some vague cost to society via property taxes)

[rawgabbit]

The problem with "costs" is that when companies are finally faced with steep fines or lose a lawsuit, they would often declare bankruptcy or a spin-off a division and dump all the obligations to the spun-off company which would go bankrupt. The only thing that works, I believe, is the threat of criminal penalties with actual jail time.

[pfdietz]

That's a good point, so laws requiring bonds or insurance would also be needed. This could be an incentive towards at least limiting the worst case outcomes; if those are too large insurance may not be available.