In: Economics
Do you think that clean air is a scarce resource? Please discuss from the meaning of scarce resources to the air as an economic factor.
Clean air was not a scarce good anywhere when the human population (say, a million years ago) was a fraction of what it is today. Today clean air is a scarce commodity in many large metropolitan areasThat is because it uses the atmosphere as a sink to dump pollutants into it. The environment has a restricted capacity to absorb contaminants and in many regions of the world this limit has been exceeded.
Wherever clean air is a scarce good, it needs to be paid for. Meaning you've got to spend clean air resources. You do so by implementing systems to reduce the amount of waste that is pumped into the atmosphere. That is the cost to get clean air.
Air is not scarce because it is unlimited. Clean air is scarce because the resource can be limited.