Question

Background

Plastic packaging for products first became available in the 1950s, and its use has grown exponentially over the last 65 years. Over the past few years people around the world have become increasingly aware of the impact of plastic waste on the environment. Large quantities of plastic waste in waterways, discoveries of plastics ingested by sea animals and microplastics in the food web motivated many consumers to look more carefully at how their consumption contributes to plastic waste.

Over the last 12 months, the major supermarket chains have stopped offering “single use” plastic bags for customers’ groceries. However, these plastic bags are one small form of global plastic pollution. Plastic packaging exists on the bulk of consumer products. It facilitates transportation and reduces waste, by keeping the products free from damage, and, in the case of food products, reduces the risk of contamination and spoilage in the journey from manufacturer to the retailer’s shelf.

Question:Examine how the actions of current generations have impacted on the state of the planet that will be inherited by future generations. How might the inclusion of intergenerational effects affect the valuation of the marginal social cost?

Thanks! Not more time due!!!!

Answer 1

Our planet has limited resources and the way we treat those resources has an effect on us, not only in present but also in future. Earth tries to replace the resources extracted from it during the course of development, but the natural process is time taking. It takes thousands of years to form natural resources that are renewable and there are many which are non-renewable, which once extracted would never come back.

Thus, our actions today has a lot of effect on the future conditions. The more we extract and damage the resource base of the planet today, our future generation will have lesser and degraded resources than we have today. We have been using plastic bags furiously, killing sea animals, destroying land resources, and if we continue like this, the future generation will have more plastic waste than animals. More plastic dumping grounds than grasslands. The state of the planet inherited by future generation would not be very satisfying.

The marginal social cost is the change in total cost of the society due to production of one extra unit of a voog or service. Here the good is pollution (which is a bad). When we consider the intergenerational effects of pollution, the social cost increases. The marginal cost to society of a unit change in pollution increases. Thus, more abatement would be done.