Question

Can pollution ever make us better off?how do we know ?should we aim to eliminate all pollution? If not, what should our goal be? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

Pollutants are not always harmful and bad. They are resources which are displaced. For example, ozone is very important for our stratosphere; it protects our planet from ultraviolet radiation. But it can be harmful at lower levels in the atmosphere.

Substances that we consider "pollutants" are not always bad. They are just displaced resources. For example, ozone is crucial to our stratosphere; without it, our planet would be unprotected from ultraviolet radiation. However, at lower levels in the atmosphere it can be quite harmful.

Pollution is acceptable in society at a reasonable level. Eliminating all pollution from the society is a very costly affair. Therefore society should eliminate only the pollution that it benefits from preventing and this is how it should should maximize its welfare. Natural resources have some capacity to recover from pollutants, but once that threshold, or assimilative capacity, is surpassed, we have a social problem (Dillingham et al., p. 477). To attain a ero level of pollution is not possible. Our aim should be to not pollute beyond the assimilative capacity of the resources until a technology is found to clean up the pollutants. This can be a very expensive affair and therefore pollution is acceptable at a level where the marginal cost of preventing the pollution is eual to its marginal benefit.

The efficient level of pollution is the point where marginal social cost of environmental uality is eual to its marginal social benefit. After this point the cost of an additional unit of pollution prevention will exceed the benefits that we get from that additional unit of pollution prevention.

The marginal private costs of individuals or organizations is lower than that of society when these individuals or organizations who pollute the environment do not bear the entire costs of pollution.Currently, pollution is regulated by the United States government using either direct or indirect regulation. Companies have to limit their emissions of certain pollutants to a certain emission standard under direct regulation. Indirect regulation can be of many forms but the main objective is to bring down the pollution to the desired level. Companies have financial disincentives for polluting.under indirect regulation.The consumer can bear the additional costs of pollution. Those who are getting the benefits from the activities causing pollution should be the ones responsible for the prevention of the damage or the reversal of the damage they cause.