After talking with my cousin Eric from Cincinnati over dinner at Mother Bears and moved to complete this assignment. I asked him what he thought the biggest problem with the Environment was in order to get an idea of his ideas and issues that were important to him. He brought up Metropolitan pollution.
He believes that is impossible to get rid of pollution. He says that the alternative is far too expensive and impractical for companies to produce products without by-products of waste. Even trying to remove, he believes that the money spent on solving the problem could go toward solving for the future. There is a need for a restriction on pollution and a company’s ability to pollute. A cap enforced by the EPA that is specific to the each product. This is to say X amount of pollution per product produced and poundage of coal and other fossil fuels burned. This would prevent over production and in turn over consumption is what he urges. He brought up the Clayton and Sherman act, which prevent monopolies among other things. But without the capacity to produce as much as they could afford because of their pollution cap, a company would be forced to accept competition based on environmentally friendliness—which a long-term benefit for everyone.
He also sees the need for a much strong EPA. One that can come in and destroy a company until it complies. HE says that without the entire support of the federal government, things will not happen.
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I personally feel as though Eric is a little unrealistic. Presently companies are limited to how much they can produce through fines placed on them by the government, however, there are a plethora of ways companies can get around them, or they are not strict enough to be worth following. I do believe that something needs to happen with a monetary incentive for companies to not pollute. Overwhelming fines, when companies begin to lose true, real money that makes a difference, prove to be the game changer when it comes to reducing pollution.
I know Eric is well intentioned, but companies do not respond well to government intervention. It is against the entire basis of a company working hard for everything they have and spending their money in the ways they want, even it means producing more to make more, in turn polluting more. In this way I strongly disagree that a stronger EPA is anymore successful than what is in place now. The government making demands and big business being expected to follow to them is similar to expecting a conviction grand theft auto felon to watch your car for a week if you give him the keys. They will rebuke all governmental controls.
Lastly, I want to propose a solution to level the playing field between big business and small business and the government. If there were cards that allowed for X amount of pollution and cost a certain amount of money determined by supply and demand of them, and they were sold to first come first serve highest bidders, there would be a substantial lower amount of pollution. If these card limits—set by the government, enforced by the government—were violated, EPA would impose fines that progressively doubled based on the amount over they polluted. The EPA needs to make it monetarily the most painstaking thing ever to afford, even unaffordable until the company has to go bankrupt or stop polluting all together.
