This thread is not about debating if certain current environmental hazards exist or not.
Should it be more of a priority to assume that any contraversial environmental scare is true, rather than to argue against it (unless of course you are an expert in the specific field) and show how the government is not the best answer (and maybe even part of the initial problem)?
First of all, you do not have to be an expert in a field to know if there is a wide spread difference of opinion between the experts in a field. Especially if, as in the case of evnironmental issues, scientists, at large, have not started to call those collegues having a different view "non-scientists".
The case of global warming being an human induced threat to the rest of nature is as open as anything can be. But even if there was the need to take large scale measures, the states and society as a group are the worst you can pick to carry out that task.
Taking a positivst approach, only to not be blamed for un-scientific methods, the evidence we have for states and economic planners being the culprits of vast environmental damages is a historic date we can not overlook.
The biggest human mead ecologic desasters we are aware of have been perpetrated in the name of society and by state planners. The real big ones allmost all in the former soviet union. Whatever can be said about the soviet union, it was for sure a state and it planned the economy using the scientific method of experts to provide for their people. This is undeniable.
The horrors of the comunist states where the outcome of planning and social engineering. It was the idea of creating the new man, and in this respect not very different from the goal of German Nazism. While the Nazi ideology already had the new man, the thoroughbred German, and their way to achieve its world dominance was to exterminate all non-thoroughbred Germans in the long run, the comunists wanted to create their thoroughbred "new man" by means of social engineering and central planning to provide to each to his needs. Some individuals, that seemed totally unfit for social engineering where separated in places called the GULAG. The rest was in dire straits regarding the most basic means to survive (leading to even canibalism in the ukrain, know as the granary of europe). But, those humans could see themselves as heroes that gave their life and, often enough, that of their children for the great goal of a new man feed, controlled and steered by the altrusitic central planners and their scientific experts.
What is the reason central planners can not provide for the simplest things even in areas of plenty like the ukrain? The absence of a price? Yes, eventually that is the reason. Yet, there is another reason. There is usually a different time preference between owners of something and users of something.
If I own, say a some 20 acres of wood, it is mine to profit from it as long as I live. Even more, I can pass it to my heirs as well. Because of this, I will try to maximize the profit of the wood by trying to sure sure it will generate a surplus almost permanently (at least as long as I live). Hence I would not like to cut down the wood in a 4 year period and own a piece of useless wasteland for the next 50 years to come. My goal would be to make the wood a perpetual source of income and I would do everything ecoonomical to ensure not to take out more than can be regenerated.
A user has a quite different time preference. Say I rent that 20 acres woodland from you for a certain price over a time of 4 years. Like you I am interested in making the highest possible profit from the woodland. Only that the timeframe to do that is not indefinite, as yours basically is, but exactly 4 years.
After 4 years, the woodland won't raise any profit for me anymore. So, I do not mind if the woodland is turned into a wasteland after I lost the usage. Unless the contract says I have to give back a certain amount of living trees, it would make perfect sense to exploit the woodland even if it means it will extinct.
As you see time preference is the key. You can not replace altruism for it. It has never worked -another historical date for positivist scientists.
Now what does that tell us about environmental issues?
It tells us that those having the biggest benefit over the longest time will be the ones that will protect their assets in a sustainable - I love that word :-) - way.
Those that can only profit in a short timeframe will tend to exploit a resource. At the end to its extinction.
Now it should be clear why planners and the state do not really care in preserving the environment. They do not own it. They just use it. And given election cycles, their usage might be cut off every 4 or 5 years.
Oh, didn't those nasty industialists, them capitalist pigs pollute the air, cut down the woods and contaminate the rivers, lakes and the sea? Yes they did, at least in the so-called capitalist societies. Yet, looking at their ownership you might find, that they bought not the land, which would not be sold by the state, but a license to use it. No wonder, they have no interest in preserving it. They maximize their profits if they use up all that can be used up by the time the license ends, usually 20 years maybe.
Polluters are usually users not owners.
Owners have every interest to preserve, users have every interest to us up all of a resource while they are in possesion of it.
It get's even worse, when the state starts to allow a certain amount of pollution. This way he prevents all those that are aggressed against by pollution to take legal action against polluters. Where the licensed merkantilists responsible for any aggression they comit against others, even in case of polluting, they would have a great incentive to invent processes that minimize pollution or better even avoid it complete. Yet the state started to allow pollution for the "common good" and for increasing license fees I suppose.
Those two effects eventually led to the environmental issues we face today. Now, I wouldn't suggest to make the culprit responsible to provide a solution.
Bottomline the state is not part of the initial problem. It is the inital problem.
In the begining there was nothing, and it exploded.
Terry Pratchett (on the big bang theory)