The Worst Polluters; J.K. Williams

Unfortunately, most defenders of the market fail to address such criticisms. In fact, many would-be defenders do more harm than good. For example, some defenders respond to envi ronmentalist critics by claiming that the ben efits of modern technology and the market "outweigh" environmental costs. Other de fenders of the market respond by ridiculing a concern for the environment, implying that en vironmentalism is a form of human folly. An other response argues that industrial pollutants are minuscule compared to the pollutants nature releases into the environment. Some of these responses may have limited merit. What is disturbing, however, is the tacit admission by many proponents of the market economy that environmental pollution is, alas, an undesired but somehow inevitable accompa niment of free enterprise. Hence a simple question: Is pollution a nat ural result of the capitalist system?

If the free market is responsible for pollu tion, one might reasonably expect that socialist economies would be characterized by an ab sence of pollution. The reality, however, is otherwise. Recent accounts from Poland, for example, paint a picture reminiscent of Dickensian por trayals of the Industrial Revolution. According to the Polish Ecological Club, an informal or ganization of environmental scientists, chem ical pollution in the industrial Katowice region The Reverend Doctor John K. Williams has been a teacher and is afree-lance writer and lecturer in North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. of Southern Poland constitutes a problem of horrendous proportions. Garden soil samples reveal a lead content of up to five hundred times the national limit. Farms near the Lenin Steelworks have been so poisoned with heavy metals that such traditional crops as sugar beets and green vegetables have had to be aban doned. The lead content in salad greens was found to exceed the safe human limit twenty one times.

Consider the following report on the situa tion in Cracow: Acid rain dissolved so much of the 16th cen tury Sigismund Chapel of Walwel Cathedral that it recently had to be replaced. The chem ical used to dissolve gold in the chemistry laboratory is aqua regia . . . a mixture of concentrated hydrochloric and nitric acids. . . . Something not unlike aqua regia falls daily in the Cracow rains, . . . con vert[ing] the chapel's original gold roof into soluble chlorides. (Lloyd Timberlake, "Po land-The Most Polluted Country In The World?" New Scientist, October 22, 1981) The situation in the Soviet Union is also grim. Indeed, the lakes and seas of the U.S.S.R. are more polluted than in any capi talist nation. Lake Baikal in Siberia is all but destroyed. The salinity of the Caspian and Aral Seas has risen alarmingly, with much water having been diverted for irrigation and hydro electric projects. The problem has been com pounded by feeder rivers which have been de scribed as "little more than open sewers." (See F. Singleton (ed.), Environmental Misuse in the Soviet Union [New York: Praeger Pub lishers, 1976] and Marshall I. Goldman, The Spoils of Progress: Environmental Pollution in the Soviet Union [Cambridge, Mass.: Massa chusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1972.]) 58 THE FREEMAN. FEBRUARY 1987 Conditions are no better in communist China. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping recently conceded that, under Chairman Mao, environ mental devastation was rampant, with many forests being reduced to deserts, over eight mil lion acres of the north Chinese plain being made alkaline and thus unproductive, and pol lution of rivers so hampering fish migration that fish for a time all but disappeared from the national diet. (J. Erikson, "Candour From China," The Australian, March 3, 1984; com pare China News Analysis, October 6, 1978, December 1, 1978, February 16, 1979.) Socialist reality shatters the fantasy that en vironmental problems in general, and pollution in particular, are market-created phenomena.

Property Rights The Industrial Revolution led to widespread pollution in the form of factory smoke. Common Law, however, provided a frame work within which the victims of such pollu tion could seek redress. All that was required was the enforcement of private property rights through, for example, the tort of nuisance. Air pollution affecting the person or property of a given party clearly constituted a nuisance against which the victim should have been able to sue for damages. But it was feared at the time that industrial progress would be impeded if the courts, re lying on Common Law, defended the property rights of individuals, with industries paying ap propriate damages. Thus, governments deliber ately altered the laws relating to nuisance, neg ligence, and trespass. Private entitlements to clean air were transferred to the so-called "public domain" where, not surprisingly, they were effectively appropriated by industrialists.

The sorry tale is told in an admirable paper by Joel F. Brenner: "Nuisance Law and the Indus trial Revolution." (Journal of Legal Studies, 1974) and in Morton J. Horowitz's volume, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni versity Press, 1977) The effects of this dramatic change were sin gularly unfortunate. By declaring air a "public good" government made it possible for indus trialists to impose the appalling costs of pollution upon the men, women, and children whose persons and property were invaded with impu nity. Furthermore, the absolution of polluters from responsibility for the costs of their activi ties meant an absence of any economic incen tives to develop non-polluting technologies. The crucial point is disarmingly simple. Horror stories about pollution typically focus upon what people are doing to the air and to rivers, lakes, and oceans. It is no accident that these resources are "unowned," having been assigned by governments to the "public do main."

What to do? One might lament a lack of "social responsibility" on the part of polluters. One might fantasize that some as yet untried variant of the socialist formula will lead to the evolution of a "new humanity" regarding pol lution with abhorrence. However, one cannot assert that the free market in a free society is responsible for pollution. Pollution exists in precisely those areas where the free market, de pending as it does upon precisely defined and efficiently enforced private property rights, has not been allowed to operate. It is the absence, not the presence, of the free market that can be cited as a cause of pollution! Conclusion It is interesting to consider how the free market in a free society might address the problem of pollution. Clearly, a vital first step is a return to Common Law and the vigorous enforcement of private property rights. The laws of trespass, negligence, and nuisance to remedy the invasion of an individual's person or property by smoke, chemicals, noise, and so on would do much to resolve the problem. No less important would be the development of private property rights in hitherto "unowned"