Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

The Moderating Growth in Vehicle Miles Traveled

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by

James A. Bacon
in

There is precious little good news to report on the transportation front, but reader Danny Newton has brought to my attention a fascinating article published by the U.S. Department of Transportation with the ungainly title, “The Case for Moderate Growth in Vehicle Miles of Travel: A Critical Juncture in U.S. Travel Behavior Trends.” (I have linked to a PDF file here.)

While Americans will continue to drive more than in the past, they won’t rack up increased Vehicle Miles Driven at the same prodigious rate as in the past, argues the author, Steven E. Polzin with the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida. The strain on the nation’s transportation system may be less than widely anticipated. But there’s a downside, of course: There is so little slack left in the transportation system that any increases in demand will contribute to congestion.
The chart above (click on the chart to enlarge) summarizes what’s going on: (1) The population will grow at a slower rate between 2002 and 2025 than between 1977 and 2001; (2) the number of daily trips that people take will plateau; (3) the length of the trips will increase, but not as rapidly; and (4) the total Vehicle Miles Traveled will increase, but at only at 40 percent of the rate in the previous quarter century.

Here’s the cool part: Most of the change will be painless — the result of demographic shifts.

  • The population is getting older. People tend to do the most driving in the 25-to-50 age bracket. That’s when they’re commuting to work and schlepping their muchkins to activities all around town. The baby boom generation is aging out of that bracket and heading toward retirement, when people drive less.
  • Most women are driving now. The increase in VMT was pushed in recent decades by the increased demand for mobility by women. As women entered the workforce and moved to the suburbs, they needed automobiles to juggle their duties. Most of the women who want to drive now have cars.
  • Shrinking family sizes. Back to the care and feeding of the little monsters. Fewer children translates into less parental chauffeuring.
  • Mode shifts. Past increases in VMT were driven in part by shifts to cars from other modes: walking, biking, carpooling and mass transit. Those shifts appear to be bottoming out.
  • On the other hand… Travel demand is correlated with income and free time. Incomes are rising and people are enjoying more free time. (While Americans are spending more hours working and commuting, they are spending less time on family care and personal care.) With more money and time to burn, people engage in more leisure travel.

Concludes Polzin:

Collectively, this body of data provides a compelling case for anticipating that VMT growth is moderating. However … the apparent unrelenting growth in travel time budgets and growing trips lengths may offset some of the factors that would appear to dampen VMT growth pressures. …

The premise that the reserve capacity in our system has been nearly fully absorbed and travelers have made the easy adjustments in travel departure times and route choices to utilize the high performing roadway segments, suggests that subsequent increases in demand may result in proportionally more severe consequences in terms of congestion levels and declining speeds.

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65 responses to “The Moderating Growth in Vehicle Miles Traveled”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Where the heck has DOT been?

    The prediction this would happen has been made in many places for years, not least of all by yourself.

    Is this just the data finally developeing to prove what we all expected?

    Declining speeds is one way to increase capacity – up to a point. But it also means you can reach fewer places in the same time. Declining speeds amounts to an increase in the cost of travel, and increased costs of travel result in more dispersed workplaces.

    This is something I predicted years ago, and which we can now see in action via the data. Now that we have a better vision of what is likely to happen, how do do we plan to deal with it?

    We can accomodate the changes with neutral policies, we can try to thwart the changes with negative subsidies, or we can try to accelerate or direct the changes with positive subsidies.

    As Larry notes, subsidies are a recipe for failure. IOt is possible to come up with plans that are subsidy neutral and still provide a real benefit to travelers and the public.

    RH

  2. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    increased demand for a finite resource or worse increased demand for a shrinking resources requires:
    (choose one)

    1. a self-adjusting subsidy to keept the price steady for everyone.

    2. let people and business decide if they want to pay more or become more efficient

    3. have everyone report to the Subsidy King to convince him they have “no choice” other than continue consumption and want to extend the subsidy.

    🙂

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    OK fine.

    But lets assume that the government is not going to do nothing. Unless you actively pursue a subsidy neutral policy, anything the government does is going to benefit some more than others, which is a subsidy.

    Let’s further assume that the present condition is full of subsidies, as some people claim.

    The question is, how do you process the information you have so that it can be used most successfully: ie to reach a condition that is subsidy free?

  4. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    “Subsidy King” — I like that.

  5. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    …”reach a condition that is subsidy free?”

    man.. what a FAT pitch!

    “user pays”

    🙂

  6. Darrell -- Chesapeake Avatar
    Darrell — Chesapeake

    Guess they missed the part where older people are working longer, because they have not saved sufficiently for their retirement years.

    Or the part where incomes have not been increasing fast enough to overcome inflation and all these new taxes the government wants to impose on the citizenry.

    Or the part where the jobs aren’t being eliminated when the baby boomers retire, so someone (hint: immigrants, legal and otherwise) will have to take their place.

    I could go on, but the bottom line is that the researchers are making assumptions that are unsubstantiated in the real world outside their ivory tower. Otherwise the American public had better get ready for one gigantic recession.

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Anything government does is going to benefit some and cost others. both conditions amount to a subsidy.

    If we had strictly user pays we wouldn’t need government. But, given that we have government we might as well try to make it subsidy neutral.

    An agreed method to approach subsidy neutrality would make it clear to the warring special interests that…

    ” both of them might start thinking more seriously about other, possibly more cost-efficient alternatives.”

    Now, you asked in another post if this doesn’t amount to everybody subsidizing each other.

    I’m not sure, and I’m not sure if it makes any difference.

    What difference is there if everybody subsidizes each other, or if everybody pays each other for every supposed cost? Even given the legendary capacity of the government for inefficiency, the transaction costs might be lower.

    And, as another reader pointed out, individuals don’t have the same bargaining power. they don;t have the same etical requirement to protect minorities.

    And most important, the whole reason for having government is that we (think we) benefit from thewhole being valued at more than the sum of the parts.

    A business takes money in and pays money out, but somewhere in between something happens. If the business is going to exist, it better be something positive. When that something happens its value is more than the value of the labor that went in.

    Government is the same way, and that value is what we call the public good. If everyone subsidized everyone equally, as you suggested, there could be no public good.

    Subsidy neutral says you take out the subsidies by taxing the winners enough to pay the losers, then, if there is still a clear public benefit, you have a good plan and not a feeding trough for special interests.

    Lacking that short cut to advantage at the cost of others, temporary advantage, or locational advantage [caused by action of the government, not competitors] then both parties might might start thinking more seriously about other, possibly more cost-efficient alternatives.

    RH

  8. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Things that are true about the government.

    Not only can the government impose rules that cost you money, they can develop rules that will put you out of business and they could get rid of any pretense about a rule and directly raise your taxes for their discretionary use.

    And RH, you really are an advocate for this because you work the “I am entitled to a subsidy side of the street” .. which ends up increases taxes on other folks to pay such subsidies.

    So.. you seem to advocate more subsidies and, in turn, higher taxes to fund these subsidies.

    We keep hearing where you say you are “entitled” to a subsidy (for some alledged “taking”) but then I .. don’t hear you saying that others should pay higher taxes to provide you with that subsidy.

    How would you feel if your taxes were raised.. everytime someone else claimed they were do a subsidy?

    How would you decide whose should get subsidies and who should have their taxes raised to pay for them?

    Are we back to the “Subsidy King” who figures out who pays and who receives?

    Try selling mercury or agent orange or high quality wacky weed.

    But my point is – that you are not entitled to a subsidy just because others are getting a subsidy and that the goal is to have as much “user pays” as is possible and to get rid of every subsidy that is not absolutely necessary.

    See.. RH.. you work this from the oppsosite side.. you view seems to be that if even one subsidy exists that does not benefit you.. that there needs to be two subsidies.. one for someone else and one for you.. and then we just expand them out so that we have subsidies for everyone and everyone gets a chinese menu to choose what subsidies suit them.

    and then .. through logic that I fail to grasp.. you consider “user pays” as a subsidy… a “reverse” subsidy.. which is where I lose the reasoning…

    so.. you end up with .. everyone pays and everyone gets a subsidy and all is well…

    and the problems occur when we try to elimiate subsidies .. because it is not “fair” to do this unless we do it in precise eqlatarian increments … precisely computed and accounted for.

  9. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Vehicle miles travelled

    how come transit is not also measured in an equivalent way?

    one lane of road can theoretically move about 2000 cars per hour.

    Transit is capable of moving up to 16,000 people per hour (per track).

    BRT can move about 8K (I think).

    http://trafficincident.org/meetcon/2005AM/Evans_Tues.pdf

    Even if every auto had 4 people in it, it still would only move 8,000 people per hour (per lane) – which if one thinks about it.. is similiar to BRT…

    At any rate.. if we want to truly measure mobility – shouldn’t we be measuring how many people per hour – move – and what mode – especially during rush hour?

    and then a question… why is measuring VMT .. relevant only for roads?

    The debate would be advanced (in my view) for urban area mobility information and analysis if all modes measured VMT because.. inevitbly the disparity between auto and transit would quickly lead to the issue of how many people per vehicle.

    Unstated in many discussions about mobility is that we really don’t have a problem with enough capacity to move .. PEOPLE…

    what we have a problem with is solo VEHICLES – ergo VMT – and the oft-suggested “solution” which is to cater to those who prefer to drive solo (more roads) as the most cost-effective answer to congestion in urban areas.

    In other words, I am asking should the solo-driven auto be the standard by which we measure mobility?

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    You have not understood a single thing I have said. I didn’ t invent this stuff and you can believe it or not, twist it any way you like.

    “you seem to advocate more subsidies and, in turn, higher taxes to fund these subsidies.”

    This is not my position. You really don’t get it. I’m sorry, I wish you did.

    I’m opposed to both positive and negative subsidies, and I’m opposed to any costs that increase government’s total costs, but that does not include the [rare] case when an increase in government costs creates an even larger social benefit (after the inevitable subsidies have been zeroed out).

    Yes. The government can put you out of business. The government can make slavery legal. What the government cannot do is change economics.

    If the government closes down or increases costs to a business in the belief that the costs outweigh the benefits (when that is not the actual case) then the government will have done a disservice to itself and society: it will have increased societal costs and probably pollution. It will have reduced tax revenues to itself which we will have to make up from other sources (our pockests).

    The government may have the legal authority to close down that business, reduce pollution from that business through higher costs, or allow the pollution and collect pollution taxes, but it does not mean the government has done either the right thing or the environmentally beneficial thing.

    As environmentalists and taxpayers, it is in our interests to see that this does not happen, otherwise we will be the ones subsidizing a benefit we don’t get.

    You choose not to believe this, or to believe that it seldom happens, but that doesn’t change the fact that it can happen. If we continue to incrementally increase regulations in pursuit of some assumed right to zero pollution then eventually it will happen.

    When and if it does, or to the extent it already does, it will mean that we are causing an unwarranted expense to someone else that we have no right to do, according to your hierarchy of rights.

    “We keep hearing where you say you are “entitled” to a subsidy (for some alledged “taking”) but then I .. don’t hear you saying that others should pay higher taxes to provide you with that subsidy.”

    The reason for the taking in the first place is to provide some public benefit, or some additional public benefit. Paying money for a benefit to the one you take it from is not a subsidy. It is called “User Pays”.

    The fact that the benefit claimed is relief from unwarranted damage is economically entirely beside the point.

    That is the point you don’t seem to get. The claimed idea that the other guy has no right to cause the damage in the first place has nothing to do with the fact that shutting him down or increasing his costs still has a social and economic impact that is opposite in direction to the benefit claimed. It might be less or more than the value of the benefit.

    Whether your claimed idea for “no pollution” rights is right or wrong does not prove that enforcing your claim through force of law either will not or cannot cause more damage than it prevents. The law doesn’t control economics.

    You have a business that is presently opperating according to the law, or lack thereof. You have a new law. The law shuts down the private business to provide a public benefit which is defined as lessening some harm.

    If value of the benefit is greater than the cost of the shutdown, surely we can afford to provide some kind of compensation, and still have a benefit. I not only don’t see a problem, I see a social obligation because in creating a new law we have changed the terms of our social contract.

    There are no new taxes here. We are paying for the cost of the benefit (the shutdown) with part of the value we claim it is worth. Before, we paid for part of the value of the factory output with the costs of pollution. It is either an even trade or a better than even trade, based on our own claims.

    But if the value of the benfit is NOT greater than the cost of the shutdown, we have no right to cause the owner the extra costs of shutdown over benefit, according to your doctrine.

    According to mine we have no economic or environmental reason to do so, and probably an imperative to do the opposite.

    Those that pay the compensation are not paying a subsidy for the taking: they are paying a user cost for the benefit they get. The requirement that they first pay for the taking ensures two things: first, that thay are not getting a benefit by stealing it, and second, that any proposal for a new taking for social reasons actually does result in a net social benefit.

    RH

  11. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    ….”If the government closes down or increases costs to a business in the belief that the costs outweigh the benefits”

    Who decides this and on what basis?

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Who decides this and on what basis?”

    That is the entire point. We don’t know the answer, but we do know the procedure to find out.

    If you follow the standard cost and benefit analysis paradigm all of that information is on the table: how much and what basis. If you have a strong enough argument and follow the rules, you can alter the information or expand the size of the system.

    But you just can’t come in waving your hands claiming the price of X is the most important thing, because the rules say every thing is related. Even chaos theory and fractals have rules.

    In the case of Environmental Impact Statements we often see just such a dynamic play out. The report is issued and then we go back and demand that more things be considered or given more weight.

    Instead of following a rational procedure to get to at least some local best solution, even if it isn’t a global one, we usually wind up with a political answer. That answer happens because someone advertizes more, screams louder, or makes more outrageous claims as to their particular costs. It is further distorted by geographic and temporal dislocations.

    The answers we seek as a society are so large and take so much time, that individuals or groups can have a temporary [and I claim illusory] “win” by deliberately creating local distortions. If you are able to create a “win” that lasts a substantial portion of your lifetime, who cares what happens after that?

    Some people do care, of course. Ben Franklin made that famous bequeath to a library, long after he died. But notice, he made an investment in such a way that he knew a specific institution would collect at some time in the future. The terms and conditions were specific, not some generalized “this is for the future”.

    “Who decides this and on what basis?”

    I think we have already done a lot of it. We have good solid outlines established, but we have not codified it as a body of knowledge that is understood and accepted by most people.

    It is just as EMR says, we need more education.

    We pretty well know how many life jackets get deployed every year and how many lifeboats, and how many life rafts. Based on the number of people we save every year we can figure out what the relative worth of life rafts and jackets is in dollars per life saved.

    With a little more effort we can do more of the same. We might not be able to put a fixed price on a lot of subjective values, but we can at least put some limits on the ranges within the which the prices must be.

    This is like building a spiders web by tying together different lenghts and thicknesses of rubber bands. At first, every new attachment distorts the whole thing, but eventually the structure gains some kind of flexible equilibrium. After that adding a new leg to the web, doesn’t cause as big a disequilibrim, and the web still looks pretty much the same.

    Unlike EMR, I’m not willing to say that the only thing that matters is functional patterns or prevention of scatteration, because I don’t think we are smart enough to know, yet. One thing we need more education on, is how to evaluate what matters most.

    ———————————

    You give the example of mercury, agent orange and whacky weed. In fact, all of those things are available at a price, both government sanctioned and not. All we can say is that the government sanctions alter the price and availability, but not the economics.

    Some people think we would be better off to legalize drugs and tax them rather than use the war on drugs to subsidize law enforcement and increase drug traffickers margins.

    Who decides and on what basis?

    ———————————

    There is an article that someone referenced here that shows the true cost of gas. Sure enough, it adds up every concievable cost and comes up with an astronomical number. But it does not add up all the conceivable benefits or negative costs of gas at the same level or degree of separation, so the number is only half the story, and half the story is a lie.

    Even if you had the whole story, so what? You would have a price for gas in dollars. But if you wrote a law that applied that new price to everything that uses gas, the whole system would shift a little bit and that would change our perspective of what a dollar can buy.

    This is a hard problem but it isn’t impossible. Stock market traders use already existing models to predict how ecomic sectors will react to a shock in another sector, and some of them do it very well.

  13. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “who decides”

    Isn’t the correct answer that it is not the person who is claiming that the ROI benefits exceeds the costs?

    I think where we differ is that you feel that someone is entitled to move forward if no one proves that their ROI calculations are wrong and the process does not work that way and in fact it work 180 degrees opposite – and in my mind, for good reasons.

    You are never entitled to go forward merely because you claim that the numbers prove your own case.

    Could we imagine what would happen if anyone was allowed to do whatever they claimed was justified?

    That’s why we have someone else decide and the process involves others who may not agree at all with a claimed ROI.

    Someone can feel that they have conclusive proof.. cite experts, etc, but at the end of the day it needs to be assured that both sides have been sufficiently understood.

    If someone feels they have “conclusive proof” that has taken “everything” into account, they are free to present that argument.

    but making that argument does not entitle one to proceed even if in his own mind – others have failed to disprove his numbers.

    The proposer, in fact, has to prove – to everyone elses satisfaction such that they agree with you on the claimed ROI.

    So when someone claims that they can safely mine uranium on their own land – they can offer all the evidence they want about what the likelihood is with respect to the risk of polluting others property or the air or the water.

    – but no matter how strongly the owner/applicant feels about the level of risk, no matter how many expert numbers he brings, the bottom line is that he still is not entitled.

    In my view.. if the standard was essentially that any proposal goes forward if the ROI everyone would suffer.

    we tried this a 100 years ago and it was disastrous…

  14. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    http://www.metropulse.com/articles/2007/17_44/coverstory.html

    Mind numbing

  15. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    At any rate.. if we want to truly measure mobility – shouldn’t we be measuring how many people per hour – move – and what mode – especially during rush hour?

    Absolutely. It is a total system, and we should measure the utility of the total system. Part of the measure of mobility is the number of locations you can visit, and part is the amount of stuff you can take with you. Mass transit falls short on those two counts, even during rush hour.

    As for the rest of the day and night – it is a total loss by comparison. Even so, it does have value, and all we need to do is measure that value dispassionately – before we make up our mind as to which is better, or rather which mix is better.

    I suspect we will be riding around on rather large Segways before we give up private vehicles. It is going to be a lot of fun to see how the safety and emission standards get revised to meet the new realities.

    RH

  16. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Isn’t the correct answer that it is not the person who is claiming that the ROI benefits exceeds the costs?”

    That is less than half the answer, as usual with your analysis.

    Another part of the correct asnswer is that it is also not the person who claims unquantifiable damage.

    Another part of the answer is that it is not the pwerson who fails to recognize that their actions also have costly conssequences for others.

    Another part of the answer is that it is not the person who thinks their actions are justified as retaliation against former wrongs.

    The right answer is that there is a best available answer, and it probably isn’t the one that will best satisfy anyone. It is the answer with no political agenda, and no political support.

    As soon as you hear someone pushing for one side or another, you can be pretty sure they want THEIR answer, not the best answer.

    RH

  17. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “I think where we differ is that you feel that someone is entitled to move forward if no one proves that their ROI calculations are wrong “

    Absolutely not true. Think what you want, I never said any such thing.

    I think that the government is entitled to screw around with the economy only after showing a good faith effort to first do no harm.

    But, you should understand, that when it comes to setting environmental standards the EPA is specifically prohibited from considering costs. The entering argument is that safety and health is worth any price. But we know, based on how we distribute our resources, that this is not always true.

    Likewise, zoning and planning boards are explicitly prhibited from considering any costs other than the counties costs.

    It is no wonder we get bad decisions.

    I agree that no matter how strongly the owner/applicant feels about the level of risk, no matter how many expert numbers he brings, the bottom line is that he still is not entitled.

    And the flip side of that is that no matter how strongly the public / adjudicators feel about it, no matter where they manage to get the safety levels set, they will never get to perfectly clean and no risk, even if they are willing to spend an infinite amount of the publics money in a futile attempt to subsidize their dream.

    Somewhere in between is the right answer.

    The governor of Pennnsylvania actually has a program to reach zero pollution. He should be thrown in jail for fraud and wasting the states money, because it can’t be done.

    The basis of the program is to co-locate businesses in such a way that the waste from one is a material for the next. It is a fine idea as far as it goes, but it won’t result in zero pollution, and if it isn’t done carfully it might result in more.

    But that doesn’t matter as long as you have God, the law, and a few good slogans on your side.

    RH

  18. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    ” it is also not the person who claims unquantifiable damage.”

    Actually, in reality, it is.

    You cannot polute without their permission. End of story.

    You are not entitled at all under no circumstances to do what you think because of your own claimed “proof”.

    The onus is on you to prove to those that may be harmed, to their satisfaction that your proposal will not cause harm or that the harm caused is acceptable TO THEM.

    This is why you need a permit. The permit basically is government granting of a temporary and limited “right” to pollute AFTER you have demonstrated to their satisfaction your claims.

    It’s not about God or slogans.

    It’s about the very simple concept that one property owner does not have the right to damage others property without permission.

    Other property owners do not owe you (nor others) a single thing.

    It’s not God or a slogan but it is the law and it is the way that most everyone and that includes most property owners want the process to work.

    Owning property never entitles one to essentially “take” others property -which is essentially what you appear to be advocating when you think you are entitled to pollute.

    Can we not agree that this is, in fact, the reality even if you strongly disagree with it?

  19. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    You cannot prevent pollution. End of story. That is the physical and economic reality.

    You are equally taking others property when you claim the (impossible) right to prevent pollution. I know you can’t see that but it is the case.

    First you claim air and water as public property and then claim that no private property has the right to use air and water as a medium to transport pollution to your private property. It is a rule that is unenforceable: everyone has stuff that leaves their property.

    If air and water are public property and everyone has stuff that leaves their property, everyone is violating the rule and everyone is causing costs to other property owners. It cannot be helped. Now we are talking about a matter of degree, not a matter of absolutes.

    Even if you THINK you are preventing pollution, all you are doing is trading one cost for another.

    You apparently don’t care, even if the shifted costs are higher and more polluting, as long as the costs are shifted to someone else. As a practical matter regulation really boils down to who has the political power to force an assymetric shift of costs to someone else, which of course violates the opening premise.

    I believe that as a matter of simple symbolic logic, your idea is internally inconsistent and unsustainable, not to mention, unethical.

    No. We will never agree on this, unless you alter your position.

    RH

  20. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “It’s about the very simple concept that one property owner does not have the right to damage others property without permission.”

    I believe it is about the very simple concept that you cannot claim that right without permission, because it damages my property.

  21. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Owning property never entitles one to essentially “take” others property -which is essentially what you appear to be advocating when you think you are entitled to pollute.”

    I don’t think I’m entitled to pollute: I think I can’t help it and you can’t stop me.

    And vice versa. Neither one of us is entitled to say the other cannot do something which cannot be prevented.

    My position is that if you take one of my sticks, or if I take one of yours, then compensation is due.

    The only thing that is left is to reach agreement on fair compensation. But that is impossible if one side claims they have the right not to negotiate.

    In point of fact, regulation comes down to negotiation and shifting of costs. By your own argument you do not have the right to shift costs to others, which is what you do if you refuse to negotiate fairly.

    RH

  22. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Other property owners owe me for takings at the same value as I owe them for takings: if the takings are for a public purpose compensation is required in the Constitution.

    By claiming a one sided or absolutist value system you are taking more than a fair exchange would require. We presently have a legal system that allows this, but it still violates your opening premise.

    The environment is public property, if you will. You cannot charge more for preventing the use of it than you would be willing to pay to use it, otherwise you are stealing someone else’s property.

    RH

  23. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “The environment is public property, if you will. You cannot charge more for preventing the use of it than you would be willing to pay to use it, otherwise you are stealing someone else’s property.”

    Wrong!

    The environment is public property like a park is.

    You are not allowed to “use” it without permission and you certainly are not allowed to use it any way that you deem.

    It does not matter what you think it is “worth” relative to your own needs or ROI.

    It is NOT “stealing” to prevent you from taking something and/or more of something that does not belong to you in the first place.

    It is not up to you to determine the the right or wrong of what the value is nor your beliefs as to what you think your ‘share” is.

    If I own the land next to you and I believe that I can process plutonium and I can show a fantastic ROI as well as “prove” that there is vitually no chance that the folks around me including you will me harmed ..

    In your opinion. I am justfied to proceed because I have proved low risk and a superior ROI.

    Can you see how this is a very bad idea?

    Can you see why no landowner is allowed to proceed on this premise?

    It is simply not up to you to make the decision and for good reason.

    Your ability to proceed is determined by those who might be impacted.

    You say that it is “stealing” if you are prevented from “taking” what belongs to others, in essence, because you think a CLAIMED superior ROI gives you that right.

    this completely violates the property rights of others.

  24. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “I don’t think I’m entitled to pollute: I think I can’t help it and you can’t stop me”

    geeze RH…

    You can indeed be stopped from polluting. Any substance that the state has deemed a pollutant; you cannot discharge without a permit.

    Furthermore, people have lost their land and their financial assets for believing otherwise.

    There is not a prohibition on polluting per se but there is a prohibition on polluting without a permit.

    And no one owes you compensation if the state denies your request for a permit.

    The law states basically, that your “rights” stop right at the borders of your property and from that point on what you can or cannot discharge is determined by others who represent other property owners – the public.

    This is not a theory in a book or my opinion. It’s settled law.

    It’s the reason those who want to mine uranium in Virginia cannot do so without a permit AND no one owes them a penny of compensation if the state turns them down.

    It’s the reason why American Electric was found guilty of polluting and instead of someone compensating them, they had to agree to 4.6 Billion dollars of fine and cleanup to the public.

  25. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I’ll modify my view of your position under one of two circumstances.

    1) You can show me that your existence cause no pollution. In that way I can be sure that you are not damaging my property in some way, to some degree.

    2) You admit you have no right to pollute and harm my property and agree to send me payment in recompense : at a price only I determine.

    RH

  26. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The law is not settled, and it will change when the costs become too high. When we need the oil in ANWR, we’ll get it. When we need Virginia Uranium, we’ll get it. American electric paid the fines, and they got the money from the public: we are kidding ourselves.

    Recently a new law was passed concerning emissions from ship bilges. It was an important law and needed to be passed. In order to pump the bilge you had to get a permit, and the conditions of the permit required tests, analyses and on-board treatement, etc.

    Then someone figured out that the cost of the permit would be more than the price of your average recreational boat, which would not be allowed to pump out under the law as written.

    The law got changed.

    Now some geniuses are out trying to write specifications for the dischare of bilge water, gray water, and engine sump water for recreational boats. Sewage discharge was already originally restricted, further restricted, and then banned.

    The Chesapeake Bay foundation is already making noises about nitrogen from septic fields over a hundred miles away. Don’t be too surprised when they show up at your house and demand you shut down.

    If you support this, then you should expect that eventually someone will show up and tell you that your rights stop at your property line: not allowed to go anywhere, not allowed to do anything.

    All this for a few hundred thousand boats that mostly sit empty. God knows what they’ll do about outboards: probably require diapers.

    RH

  27. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “you certainly are not allowed to use it any way that you deem.”

    And that includes using it in a way that excludes others with equal rights: it is public property.

  28. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “You can indeed be stopped from polluting. “

    You cannot be stopped. It is impossible.

    You can redirect, you can change the location, you can issue fines, but you cannot stop it. It is impossible.

    After that, it is only a matter of negotiation, and whether the negotiation is fair, whether it results in the least pollution, or whether we just pay a lot more to redirect it.

    Into someone else’s back yard.

    RH

  29. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    RH… is it impossible to stop dumping ALL mercury or motor oil or raw sewage, etc?

    Is that what you mean when you say it is impossible to keep 100% of it from ever happening?

    I follow that part but what I don’t follow is…

    That you appear to be arguing that because we can’t keep it 100% from happening that the laws are wrong to not allow it in the first place because unless we can stop all of it.. someone is getting away with it for “free”.

    Yes.. someone can dump motor oil illegally in a creek.

    No, we cannot stop every single person that does this.

    But are you saying that because we can’t stop it every from happening that making it illegal is wrong because then those who are pevented from doing so are at a disadvantage to the guy who illegally dumped?

    Unless mistaken, you’ve also left the impression that if somone claims they can dump motor oil in a creek and provide info that demonstrates that no harm or little harm is done – that they are entitled to do so.

    and that the onus is on others to prove that it does cause harm.. and if they fail to prove it.. that the guy dumping the oil should be compensated by those who refuse to let him dump the oil.

    have I got it wrong?

  30. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Yes, you have it wrong.

    What I’m saying is that there is less than no point in making a law if the result of that law costs more than the problem it was supposed to solve. Those costs change over time and so should the law. Eventually it will.

    In fact, such a law is (likely but not guaranteed) to cause more pollution (whether it is a pollution oriented law or not). If it costs three trillion to export all the illegals and 300 billion to keep them here, what should we do?

    I do not claim that if somone claims they can dump motor oil in a creek and provide info that demonstrates that no harm or little harm is done – that they are entitled to do so.

    I do not claim that the onus is on others to prove that it does cause harm..

    What I claim is that the onus is on both of them equally to find the answer that causes the least harm. That can only be done jointly, when both sides agree that the best answer is the best answer for both. It cannot happen (or is highly unlike to happen) when one sides claims divine right.

    I’ll say this though, if we prevent dumping because we think it costs X and later we find that it really costs X/100, then we ought to be willing to reevaluate.

    As to compenation, I’ll agree it gets tricky, but it is a lot less tricky if you first accept the above premise: the best answer s the one best for all of us.

    Suppose we have a Jiffy Lube and he dumps the oil he changes. You are correct: we all get a subsidy on our oil changes by allowing the pollution. Suddenly, we claim you have no right to dump your oil in “our stream”.

    What has really happened? Before, “our stream” included the Jiffy Lube and now “our stream” excludes him. We have stolen the stream from Jiffy Lube.

    For simplicity, Lets assume there is no alternative(which is clearly not the case).

    With no place to put the oil Jiffy Lube shuts down. Pretty soon, all our cars seize up. Considering the environmental costs of manufacturing cars, is that a win?

    Obviously not, so we reach an accomodation. My contention is that we should recognize up front that there will be an accomodation, and search for the best one to begin with.

    The accomodation is that we require him to put his oil in barrels and ship it to some other site than our stream. The dirty oil hasn’t gone away we just required him to pollute someplace else, maybe someplace less valuable.

    If we don’t agree to pay him for the barrels the extra work, and the shipping and disposal costs, the we are still stealing. The barrels the extra work and the shipping all have environmental costs, so even if we pay him, we are still getting a pollution subsidy.

    The Lorton Landfill is about to be dug up and moved because the place became too valuable to use as a waste site. Dumping the oil someplace else other than the stream isn’t a solution.

    So we come up with a more complicated and expensive solution (which has its own problems) in a futile attempt to get to no pollution.

    It can never happen. We will always make an accomodation even if the accomodation is just putting him out of business.

    I’m not advocating dumping oil in the streams. But, everytime we make a new requirement we need to be prepared to pay for it. That way we put in a safeguard that prevents us from making stupid mistakes just because we think we are pulling one over on someone else.

    If the new requiremnt costs us more than the alternative, then we can be pretty sure the environmental cost is also higher. If the alternative is dumping in the stream, then we need to be damn sure what that costs, and simply claiming the cost is infinite is not the right answer.

    Unfortunately, this gets us right back to an adversarial position: If you claim the cost of the new requirement is less than the cost of dumping in the stream, then the onus is on you to show that.

    We have avoided that by setting safety and exposure standards independent of cost: we assume safety has an infinite value.

    It is the wrong way to start out, and not likely to get the best answer. Besides, we have plenty of data to show what the real cost of safety is, if we care to look.

    —————————–

    I don’t know if it is right, but this month’s National Geographic says that the cost of reducing greenhouse gasses through the use of ethanol is around $500 a ton.

    And they go into considerable detail on the pros and cons of various other costs and benefits.

    So, here I am on the farm, not allowed to do anythng else, and not being compensated for my part of the (cash) stream that was taken from me.

    If the best choice I have, under the rules (law) I have to play with, is to grow corn for ethanol, what do you think will happen? Even if I know its a bad deal for everyone else?

    I’ll clear cut the place, bulldoze it flat and plant corn for ethanol. I won’t be the only one. And the reason is that someone decided I had no right to do anything else. With a basis yet to be determined.

    If $500 a ton is right, we are probably making a huge mistake.

    But, that’s the law we made because we weren’t willing to compromise and take responsibility for our own actions along the way to forcing others to take actions in response to what we say is their responsibilty to us.

    We are ordering them to shoot us in the foot, because we don’t really know where we stand.

    RH

  31. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “No, we cannot stop every single person that does this.

    But are you saying that because we can’t stop it every from happening that making it illegal is wrong …”

    I’m saying it is stupid.

    We used to be able to take tires to the dump, then they started charging us. Last week in a local road pickup I counted 12 discarded tires, in less than a mile. Instead of the county taking the tires, we pay the county to go get the tires – and take them to the dump.

    It is stupid. And we even admit it is stupid because periodically the dump has a tire amnesty. We make an accommodation. Why not make the right accomodationinthe first place instead of creating a situation we can’t control, based on a “right” that is impossible to have?

  32. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “What I’m saying is that there is less than no point in making a law if the result of that law costs more than the problem it was supposed to solve.”

    How do you prove that?

    Hasn’t that calculation already been made when laws and policies with respect to pollution permits are decided?

    For instance, they don’t say that NO sewage is permitted. Instead they determine how much in quantity/quality is acceptable based on costs to treat the sewage vs costs of untreated sewage to the river TMDL are an example of this.

    Isn’t what you are advocating is that we have to calculate, in effect, the opportunity lost due to a horribly polluted river as compared to all the money that has been made as a result of that pollution – and that if we cannot put a dollar cost on a horribly polluted river – then it is wrong to deny anyone the right to dump pollution in it.

    Isn’t that, in fact, the way that our pollution laws used to work decades ago?

    Isn’t that the way that pollution laws work in 3rd world countries?

    Using your logic – we’d have to prove that there is a specific dollar cost to having hundreds of thousands of kids with lead in their bodies before we’d outlaw lead in toys and paints and gasoline and even then.. if the dollar cost of the harm was less than the profits from the products with lead in them.. that you would not outlaw the lead?

  33. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “How do you prove that?”

    That is a good question. Go read the books I previously reccomended.

    “Hasn’t that calculation already been made when laws and policies with respect to pollution permits are decided? “

    No.

    In fact, such calulations are expressly prohibited under the law.

    “Isn’t what you are advocating is that we have to calculate, in effect, the opportunity lost due to a horribly polluted river as compared to all the money that has been made as a result of that pollution – and that if we cannot put a dollar cost on a horribly polluted river – then it is wrong to deny anyone the right to dump pollution in it.”

    As terrible as that sounds, yes, absolutlely. If you cannot show that I am causing you the costs that you claim I have no right to cause, then you have no argument.

    ——————————-

    Lets be fair about this. I realize that such “proof” is hard to come by. Especially if you require “hard” proof.

    But “hard” proof is exactly what is required if you claim an absolutist or “divine” right.

    On the other hand, if the opening argument is that what we really want is the minimum pollution to the river that makes enough economic sense so that people an still live next to and with the river, then we open the door to “fuzzy” proof.

    We don’t have to have absolute proof to show that terrible pollution of the river is bad for us all, given what we know. But we do need absolute proof to show that no polluton whatsoever is allowable.

    This is a real pardigm shift in the way we think. I understand why it is so hard for you. I struggled with it for years before I came to my present beliefs. In the end, it came down to a clash between what I know is physically possible, what we disire politically, and a basic right to life, let alone liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

    Assume we don’t need absolute proof. Assume that we are willing to accept (for now) the argument that most cancers (just one problem among many) are environmentally caused. that cance rnever existed in the “natural world”.

    We can make rules on that basis (for now). But, if someone comes to us with other evidence, we should be willing to consider it. We cannot, as you have suggested, simply refuse the evidence because we think the author has a dog in the fight, or because we think our evidence has a higher moral ground to stand on.

    We lose that moral ground the first time we are wrong, and we can never recover it. We have a lot more “wiggle room” if we dont make the moral claim to begin with, and we have a lot more latitiude in finding a position that allows us to live and let live.

    RH

  34. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Your ability to proceed is determined by those who might be impacted.

    “You say that it is “stealing” if you are prevented from “taking” what belongs to others, in essence, because you think a CLAIMED superior ROI gives you that right.

    this completely violates the property rights of others.”

    This comes down to WHEN we decide what belongs to others, when we draw a new lin in the sand that defines new rights.

    Go read the history of what happened in Oregon. It exactly comes down to WHEN who claimed what rights.

    After you decide that, then you can decide who is violating waht property rights. You will probably have to go back all the way to the Garden of Eden.

    At that time, we either had nothing or everything, depending on how you look at it. If you think we should live naked without sin and never eat that first apple, then I concede your point: as soon as you give up eating apples and sex.

    But what happens when Eve invents applesauce? She can’t do that without pollution. At that time, pplesauce is the only currency. Even God might like some applesauce in the collection plate, but he can’t have it without allowing some polluton of Eden.

    “this completely violates the property rights of others.” implies that others have no rights, and that you are God.

    Such an implication completely violates the property rights of others.

    You are making my own argument for me.

    RH

  35. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    If you make make a law that costs more than the problem it is supposed to solve, then you are either stealing from others or causing them external costs, which you have no right to do.

    RH

  36. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “Using your logic – we’d have to prove that there is a specific dollar cost to having hundreds of thousands of kids with lead in their bodies before we’d outlaw lead in toys and paints and gasoline and even then.. if the dollar cost of the harm was less than the profits from the products with lead in them.. that you would not outlaw the lead?”

    Yes. As terrible as you make that sound, yes.

    Otherwise, the position is that we can allow no pollution, which means no one can make a living, which means we all die, and clearly that is a higher cost thna living with some lead.

    Unless you agree that there is a finite cost to life. In which case we are back to square one: what is the cost of a life?

    RH

  37. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “As terrible as that sounds, yes, absolutlely. If you cannot show that I am causing you the costs that you claim I have no right to cause, then you have no argument.”

    You as a landowner do not have the right to damage something that does not belong to you no matter how you feel about the damage.

    You simply do not have that right to start with.

    The moment pollution leaves your property it is causing harm to someone else’s property and you do not have the right to do that no matter what your own personal justification might be.

    No one owes you a penny in exchange fur you to not release pollution nor do they have to show that y our pollution is more costly to them than a benefit to you.

    You’re essentially arguing that you can spray sewage on someone else’s property and that your profit from dong that outweights the harm that that pollution is doing to their property.

    RH – this is a bizarre concept. The only thing “fuzzy” about this is your thinking on it.

    “But “hard” proof is exactly what is required if you claim an absolutist or “divine” right.”

    You’re the one claiming the “divine” right to “absolutely” pollute unless others can show that such pollution is more costly to them than it is a profit to you.

    If the law worked this way, our rivers and sky’s would be cesspools from all the folks with your point of view.

    All of Virginia would be one gigantic “Love Canal” if your logic was followed.

  38. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    It is a bizaare concept I learned in graduate school, then. Go talk to my professors and various environmental economics authors.

    “You’re the one claiming the “divine” right to “absolutely” pollute unless others can show that such pollution is more costly to them than it is a profit to you.”

    That is not what I said. What I said is that some pollution is inevitable, it cannot be avoided. Therefore any claim that there is no right to pollute is going to be met, sooner or later, at some level, somewhere, with an absolute imperative to negotiate an accommdation that works best for all concerned.

    In my view there is neither an absolute right to pollute nor an absolute right to prevent it. There are, however, physical and economic realities that exist, whether we choose to believe it or not. The realities are bizarre, the choice to ignore reality is bizarre, but the concept that we should both want what is best and causes the least waste is not bizarre.

    “You’re essentially arguing that you can spray sewage on someone else’s property and that your profit from dong that outweights the harm that that pollution is doing to their property.”

    Nope, I never said that either. What I claim is that if you claim $500 dollars in damage and I claim $2000 in profit, then you ought to be happy and indifferent, AS LONG AS I SPLIT MY PROFIT WITH YOU. This is not about me making profit at your expense: it is about us being partners in such a way that we both benefit.

    Conversely, you have no right, in order to prevent $500 in damage to cause $2000 dollars in damage to someone else, especially if you claim the damage is subjective and not measurable. By saying that the other person does not have the right “to start with” you are implying a prior right that never existed before.

    On the other hand, If you can show that causing that $2000 dollars worth of damage will save nine people 500 each, then we ought to be able to come to an agreement such that everybody is better off by $250 bucks, rather than one in which nine peeople are better off by $500 dollars and one person is dead.

    “No one owes you a penny in exchange fur you to not release pollution nor do they have to show that y our pollution is more costly to them than a benefit to you.”

    It is not a question of benefit to me, it is a question of benefit to us. If I can show that your demand makes us both worse off, then your demand violates its own precept that you have no right to cause damage to another.

    You can refuse to listen to the argument, you can deny the experts, you can invoke the law, you can claim the other sides argument is “self serving” and you claim your side of the argument is simply by prior right, superior moral ground, and claims of infinite but unmeasurable costs.

    You can do all of that and more. But after it is all said and done, if the true fact of the matter is that we are, in fact, all worse off because of your action, then your action still violates its own precept that you have no right to cause damage to another. It is ethically wrong, no matter how much power you bring to bear.

    No, we would not be living in a cesspool, but we would each be sharing equally in the costs of whatever amount of pollution is unavoidable, and we would also be sharing equally in the costs of avoiding pollution instead of stealing that value from someone else by claiming they had no right to it “to begin with”.

    RH

  39. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I do not have to accept your proposition of sharing the profit with me,.

    I can refuse it outright and owe you not a penny for that refusal.

    what you did not learn in Grad School was that what works in “theory” is not the way the law actually works in practice.

    You are free to make whatever claims you wish to make about what the “profit” might be from your pollution but others are just as free to reject outright your claims and that is the end of the story for you.

    Not allowing you to pollute does not mean that no pollution is allowed,.

    How much pollution is allowed IS determined by the government acting on behalf of the public (other landowners).

    You are free to request a permit but if your request exceeds what has been determined to be acceptable then you will be denied.

    and again…no one else, no individual nor the State owes you one red penny for not accepting your claims that you are entitled because YOUR analysis has determined that it is a positive ROI for all parties.

    YOUR analysis, RH is worth nothing. It is merely your idea, your assertion… and no one has to accept it.

    If you make a request to pollute and you agree to LIMITS determined, not by you, but by the government, then you will receive a permit.

    That’s the way it works.

    You obviously don’t agree but what I am asking you is to admit that the way you think it ought to be is not the way it really is and then we can agree to disagree and move on.

  40. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “I do not have to accept your proposition of sharing the profit with me,.

    I can refuse it outright and owe you not a penny for that refusal.”

    Yes you can do that, but then you can no longer claim to be working for the greater public benefit. you are going to have to explain why you think it is better for you to have $500 and someone else nothing, rather than let everybody have $499.

    You lose all credibility of being fair and honest regarding your proclaimed intentions. In doing so you effectively admit that you are using the law to steal a larger personal benefit to yourself at the expense of a smaller individual but larger social benefit.

    You insist on making this about you and me when it is really about you and us, all of us.

    —————————-

    If I apply to the government for a permit the government may or may not make some assessment of costs and benefits, but whether they do or not, there will be costs and benefits that accrue to different citizens differently.

    I will have to meet the limits they demand. If they demand limits that are EITHER excessive in in cost with relation to the benefits gained, OR the limits are too low with respect to the damages THEN the government will not be working in the best interests of its people.

    The factual result on the ground OF EITHER BAD CONDITION will be, regardless of what the law says, or you say, that one group of citizens will be getting a benefit at the expense of another group AND the net result will be worse than it might have been.

    In that case, you are correct. How much pollution is allowed IS determined by the government acting on behalf of the public (other landowners) — as opposed to all landowners.

    You are free to believe that the government works in the best interest of all, that limits are set on behalf of the public. But all that says is that you agree with my argument and we happen to be sitting in that blissful spot where everything is perfect and nobody is getting screwed, the costs and benefits are exactly equal.

    There must be some benefits (like jobs and electricity) or else the government would not allow the permit, right? Likewise, if the threat is really deadly, the costs are high enough that we can outlaw it despite any benefits: as in Prohibition. either example supports my “theory”.

    But now, you would still want the ability to make the rules tighter and the limits less, if and when the evidence develops, right? And what would be the basis for that? You would be petitioning on the basis of more damage, right? You would be claiming the costs and benefits had shifted, meaning you would be using my “theory” when it is to your advantage, and denying it in the other direction, Right?

    ——————————

    You are correct: as the laws are writtien no individual nor the State owes you one red penny for not accepting your claims that you are entitled because YOUR analysis has determined that it is a positive ROI for all parties.

    It works the other way, too. as the laws are writtien no individual nor the State owes you one red penny for not accepting your claims that you are entitled because YOUR analysis has determined that it is a NEGATIVE ROI for all parties.

    If the state issues a permit for pollution you don’t like, the permit holder doesn’t owe you a cent, no matter what you claim.

    But that still does not change the fact that, whether it is my analysis, or yours, or God’s analysis, if whatever analysis which is CORRECT shows that we have a suboptimal condition, then we in fact have have suboptimal condition. That condition might be EITHER because the limits are too high, or too low.

    That is the way it really works, no matter what you or the law say. so no, I do not agree that the way you percieve things is the way it really is. You are free to delude yourself and buy whatever you like, just don’t expect to ever sell it to me.

    ———————————–

    This has nothing to do with my analysis or me. It has to do with whether or not the laws are working for the best benefit of all the people. If they are not, and if someone ON EITHER SIDE can prove they are not, then the laws need to be adjusted.

    If someone can make even a reasonably strong argument that the laws are not working to the best benefit of the people, then reasonable people ought to concede that the matter is worth looking into.

    Otherwise they are neither reasonable, rational, nor interested in the public benefit. They just don’t care what is best fo r everyone because they have made their own analysis. Most likely likely for what they think is their own personal gain at someone else’s expense.

    Which as you point out, is not their right. On either side.

  41. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “yes you can do that, but then you can no longer claim to be working for the greater public benefit. you are going to have to explain why you think it is better for you to have $500 and someone else nothing, rather than let everybody have $499.”

    How about open sores on fish? Or rivers than your dog cannot safely swim in… or fish that kids cannot eat without overdosing their bodies on mercury or lead? or cities, like Newport News that have to send twice a much money for a water source because the river that runs right by them is too polluted to use?

    These are things that you say are “tricky” in determining.

    They are more than tricky, They can not be determined until AFTER the harm has been done and like many privately-owned parcels that became super-fund sites only AFTER the fact.

    The standard is water that is is swimmable and fishable.

    How do you meet standard when 1000 people all want to dump some pollutant into the river and all of them expect to get the same deal?

    There are so many questions that cannot be answered in practical terms that you think can because they make sense from a theoretical viewpoint.

    If College Economics professors were in charge of Rivers in this country, we’d all be swimming in liquid dung… because those guys has absolutely no idea of what ecology means. They think everything can be measured in dollars .., but it’s “tricky”.

    The power plant folks had the same attitude when it came to acid rain. “No problem” they said. It’s just an “infinitesimal” amount that would cost billions to remove… and so.. we turn lakes into places that cannot support life of any kind and some folks think that this is a “good” trade.

    So, we come back to the guy that wants to pollute and his opinion that his ROI makes it a “good” trade.

    And the law says that .. he is certainly entitled to his opinion and that is all.

    Those who might be affected by the pollution have absolutely no responsibility to “prove” anything at all to the guy who would pollute.

    They are perfectly free to say NO and they are perfectly free later on to change their minds if enough evidence is presented to convince them.

    No one has the inherent right to pollute and no this does not translate into “no pollution of any kind is allowed”.

    It translates into: “If “we” (the government representing ALL landowners) think that the pollution from an individual landowner is “worth it” in OUR MIND based on OUR criteria, then we agree to a limited right for a set period of time – with the understanding that the permit may not be renewed if IN OUR MIND – it is no longer worth it. Otherwise, go away and close the door on your way out.

    This is exactly what happens when the Government tells a power plant operator that their permit will not be renewed unless they agree to remove even more pollution.

    The government is the one who decides ROI and the criteria is the Government’s criteria.

    We would have anarchy if the standard was for each landowner to have the right to pollute unless those harmed “proved” something (I’m not sure what) to the satisfaction of the polluter.

    it’s a bizarre concept and if this is what is taught in Graduate School then those guys better stay with their teaching job…

    🙂

  42. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “The government is the one who decides ROI and the criteria is the Government’s criteria.”

    And IF, I said IF, the criteria is wrong, then the government is not doing its citizens any favors. IF, I said IF, those that promote stroger criteria go too far, then they are violating their own starting premise.

    What the profs say is that managing this by regulationis highly inefficient and a far better, more flexible, and efficient mechanism is to allow trading in the market.

    In the end, that’s what we do now, but with the government in the middle.

    RH

  43. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    What’s bizarre is that you accept half the theory, the half that you are able to perceive works in your favor.

    It’s like having a number system that goes from zero up, but not zero down. It can’t possibly work. We can’t see or count anything negative, but we know that the system works in our favor, just the same.

    All of the system, not just half of it.

    RH

  44. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    If we think that the envrionment is public property we have an interest ins seeing that it is used as productively as possible at the lowest cost. We have an obligation to see to it that the benefits and the costs are shared, if not equally, then at least proportionately.

    What you are suggesting is just the opposite, and if that suggestion is carried too far it WILL have the effect you represent yourself as trying to prevent: causing excess costs to others.

    A good part of our environmental assets reside on private land. More and more we our shifting our costs for having a good public environment onto those that own land that happens to be currently vacant. City folks are notoriously generous about preserving vacant land. So that’s one way that the proportionality is slipping out of whack.

    A good part of the productive use of the environment also is in private hands. Our hands, since so many of us own stock in these companies, one way or another. Just as you recognize that businesses don’t pay taxes, but pass them on to their customers, neither do businesses pay the environmental costs: they pass them to both customers and shareholders.

    We need to prevent these companies from causing us too much damage, but we also need to prevent them from sending our excess bills back to ourselves.

    You think the government and laws are doing a good job of keeping the balance, but you are not willing to give up the right of shifting it your way.

    I think other people have the same right. As long as that right is shared equally, we will stay close to a proper balnce between using and abusing our mutually shared environmental property.

    RH

    RH

  45. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “The Environmental Justice movement seeks to redress inequitable distributions of environmental burdens (pollution, industrial facilities, crime, etc.) and access to environmental goods (nutritious food, clean air & water, parks, recreation, health care, education, transportation, safe jobs, etc.) in a variety of situations.”

    Wikipedia.

    Access to environmental goods means that we will create some environmental burdens, therefore we will create some inequities as we try to resolve others. The idea is to balance out the inequities, and do it fairly.

    I think we all have an equal right to environmental justice, and you apparently don’t. You think one side of the environmental eqaution is all we need, but that is both wrong, and impossible.

    RH

  46. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines “environmental justice” as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws regulations and policies. Fair treatment means that no group – including racial, ethnic or socioeconomic groups – should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs.”

    And there you have it. All people have equal rights to fair treatment and meaningful involvement. You have no right to claim I or anybody else have no rights to claim that they are not being treated fairly, and present evidence to support their claim.

    No group should bear a disproportionate share of the negative consequences of industrial municipal or commercial operations, and no group should bear a disproportionate share of the negative consequences of federal state and local programs.

    I’d go a little farther and say that no group should enjoy a disproportionate chare of the positive consequences either.

    I read no group to mean no group, including industralists and landowners.

    You can believe whatever you want.

  47. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “…no individuals or groups of people should be asked to carry a greater environmental burden than the rest of the community as a result of government actions. It is generally agreed that equity implies a need for fairness (not necessarily equality) in the distribution of gains and losses…”

    Sharon Beder

    RH

  48. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “The notion that a zero pollution objective is not necessarily ideal policy is one of the more difficult concepts for environmental economists to convey. After all, if pollution is bad shouldn’t we design policy to completely eliminate it? Many of us are drawn to the field based on a genuine concern for the environment and the belief that economics provides a powerful tool for helping solve environmental problems. Yet we are often in the position of recommending policies that appear on the surface to be anti-environmental. How can these observations be reconciled? The answer lies in understanding scarcity: we have unlimited wants, but live in a world with limited means. Economists in general study how people make decisions when faced with scarcity. Scarcity implies that resources devoted to one end are not available to meet another; hence there is an opportunity cost of any action. This includes environmental policy. For example, funds used by a municipality to retrofit its water treatment plant to remove trace amounts of arsenic (a carcinogen) cannot also be used to improve local primary education. Environmental economists are tasked with recommending policies that reflect scarcity of this type at the society level. For both individuals and societies scarcity necessitates tradeoffs, and the reality of tradeoffs can make the complete elimination of pollution undesirable. Once this is acknowledged the pertinent question becomes how much pollution should be eliminated. How should we decide? Who gets to decide? To help provide answers economists use an analytical tool called cost-benefit analysis. ”

    Environmental Economics

    RH

  49. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “A very general idea is that an efficient choice for government is one that means people in the community in general will be better off as a result. This means, then when an environmental economist makes a benefit calculation, the idea is to make an estimate in dollar terms of how much better off people in the community will be. Similarly, the cost calculation is supposed to be an estimate of how much worse off people in the community will be. In general, the people who are better off, given a choice by government, will not be the same people who are worse off because of government’s choice. Economists want to recommend only government actions which are expected to have benefits greater than costs (both terms as specifically defined by us) because when this condition obtains they know it is possible to use resources differently in our system of political economy, and in such a way that people in the community in general can be better off.

    Economists certainly like benefit-cost analysis for the reasons cited in the above quote. But, there is more to it. We also like benefit-cost analysis because we conceptually construct, and then estimate, our notions of benefits and costs so that we can make empirical statements about which government choices will aid in achieving the normative purpose of government, which, in the case of most environmental economists, is an economically efficient allocation of resources.

    So, if you agree with the role of government utilized by economists, then you probably should like to know the results of their benefit-cost analyses. On the other hand, if the value judgments you favor to define the role and purpose of government (and its use of coercion) differ from that of economists, then the benefit and cost numbers estimated by economists are not likely to tell you much about whether a given choice by government advances toward the role of government you favor.”

    Larry Eubanks

    I suspect Larry is more in favor of coercion than I am.

    RH

  50. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Have every ciy make their sewer outfall upstream of their water intake. They will understand costs and benefits pretty quick.

    Yep, sores on fish and all that stuff have costs. But you are deliberately exaggerating my position. So does eliminating one hundred percent of anything that causes a problem.

    Starting from exagerated extremes is one way to find out which general direction the center is in. What we would like to see, I think, is sufficient sustainable development to sustain us, while also not poisoning us.

    If you agree that we would like to be sustained, then the question is how much sustainment and how much development, oh yeah, and how much pollution.

    Zero is not an option.

    RH

  51. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “How do you meet standard when 1000 people all want to dump some pollutant into the river and all of them expect to get the same deal?”

    You have an auction.

    No one want’s pollutants in their back yard, but pollutants will go in someones back yard. It is a guaranteed certainty. The only question is how much we are willing to pay to have someone else’s back yard used instead of our own.

  52. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    virtually every pollutant can be recycled.

    Many that were never were are now 100% recycled – though not to confuse “sequestering” from being set loose in the environment.

    This needs to be understood. Creating harmful substances is not, in and of itself – illegal as long as you store and handle them properly and/or reprocess them into useful and/or benign substances.

    This is YOUR responsibility by law and by ethics. You have no right to cause harm to others no matter your own rationalizations.

    Most industrial processes that involved oil, acids, lead, pcbs, etc are no longer allowed to be discharged except in trace amounts that cannot be removed even with BAT (best available technology).

    Even then, some substances are unacceptable to be released – period.

    None of this is based on what individuals who would pollute claim is a “better” way that just happens to provide them with a profit.

    None of this entitles one to pollute if he “shares” the profits.

    And not a single person nor the government owes such potential polluters:

    1. – the “right” to pollute
    2. – compensation to keep them from polluting

    People who pollute anyways without a permit are called lawbreakers and “criminals” and yes -they are fined and sometimes put in jail even when they claim they “had no choice”.

    And if their property needs to be cleaned up at taxpayer expense, they can lose their property also.
    (that’s called taxpayer ROI).

    No all pollution can be stopped but much of what we used to pollute, we no longer do… and no one has been paid to no longer do it either.

    why have I wasted so many words on this?

    Because I feel that this subject goes directly to the heart of the issue of what “landowner rights” are – and are not – and more than a few folks apparently believe that owning land gives them many more “bundles of sticks” than they actually do have.

    We can debate different concepts and/or changes to these existing laws and practices but if we can’t agree on WHY the law is the way it is – right now – then much of the rest is irrelevant and moot.

    What is the fundamental basis for why the law is the way it is right now? Not whether you agree with it but what is the basis for our current pollution laws?

  53. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    The fundamental basis is political pressure created by people like yourself through mass hysteria, gross misrepresentation and exaggeration of facts, combined with a total lack of understanding of the actual financial, social and environmental results such political pressure causes.

    That, and the extrapolated results of chemical tests on mice that are genetically designed to drop dead if you look at them sideways.

    Plus, the obvious attrraction of using nice sounding rhetoric to allow yourself to (apparently) get something for nothing. In other words, greed, envy, and gross animalistic territorialism that we ough to be intelligent enough to have outgrown.

    You are right about one thing though: your words are wasted. Nothing you can say, and no law you can create will change the fact that we all have to share this planet and its resources, including the cost of using the resources, and the costs of conserving them. As far as the planet is concerned, what goes around comes around.

    RH

  54. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “virtually every pollutant can be recycled.”

    This is simply not true. Period. You are wrong about this.

    And, even to the extent you are right, recycling has costs and creates pollution of its own.

    RH

  55. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    This needs to be understood. Creating harmful substances is not, in and of itself – illegal as long as you store and handle them properly and/or reprocess them into useful and/or benign substances.

    This is YOUR responsibility by law and by ethics to understand that if you create a law that requires storage and handling procedures that cost more than the damage the procedures are designed to prevent, then you are causing harm to others, no matter your own rationalizations.

    RH

  56. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    ….”if you create a law that requires storage and handling procedures that cost more than the damage the procedures are designed to prevent, then you are causing harm to others, no matter your own rationalizations.”

    according to who? You?

    You don’t get to decide RH.

    The State does.

    You can claim victim status and catawall.. if it suits.. wouldn’t be the first person to do so.

    The law states quite clearly – you are not entitled to release what the State has determined to be pollutants – period.

    You are confusing the difference between the word “entitled” and “allowed”.

    You are not entitled at all – period – end of story.

    You have no right to start with.

    You are “allowed” if you follow the rules as determined by others – not you.

    If we did business according to what each individual had in his own mind of what was right and wrong – the answer would be easy.

    What would be “right” would be whatever you want it to be.. that best benefits you.

    That is why you don’t get to decide. It’s called a “conflict of interests”.

    Now I know you’re gonna claim that the State has a “conflict of interest” also. right? 🙂

  57. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    We have a situation where A is making a living doing something that B beleives, and have convinced the state to believe is costing you $10. so you get a law passed that costs A $20, and that still doesn’t get the damage down to zero, but close enough so the state says, don’t bother me. Administration of the law costs A and B each $2.

    All told we spent $24 dollars to undo $10 worth of damage, and we didn’t even undo it all, we just moved it from B’s backyard to C’s

    Pretty soon C goes to complain and now we’ve spent $48 to undo $10 worth of damage. And you think this is how the government should operate to protect you and all of us.

    And that’s if A can afford the $20 when you can’t afford the $10. But A doesn’t care because he values his $10 more than B’s $20. B has the right to cost A (and by extension all of us) $20 or any amount B can talk the government into, just because A has no right to cost B $10.

    But any amount eventually means that A goes out of business, along with everybody except B sitting there fat, dumb, happy, and utterly non-polluted.

    Until the first time he needs to go to the store and discovers that there is none.

    “The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines “environmental justice” as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people ……… with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws regulations and policies. Fair treatment means that no group – including racial, ethnic or socioeconomic groups – should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs.”

    RH

  58. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “if you create a law that requires storage and handling procedures that cost more than the damage the procedures are designed to prevent, then you are causing harm to others, no matter your own rationalizations.”

    Read the first word, Larry, it says IF.

    I didn’t invent this, and it is commons sense. I really don’t see the problem.

    And it works both ways. If we had a law where the government thought they had the right balance, but we later found the damage was worse than we thought, we would need some way to go petition for greater storage an control costs.

    You WOULD want that, right?

    You, the state, or anybody else may believe that the law has the right balance. But IF, IF, and IF it turns out to be wrong, then we have a situation where SOMEBODY (and it could be either side) is taking more damage than they ought to and as a result we are ALL worse off than we might be.

    We all have an interest in repairing laws that make us worse off, but you don’t seem to think we have that right.

    I see it differently.

    “The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines “environmental justice” as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws regulations and policies.”

    You can believe whatever you want.

    RH

  59. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    RH – it’s not what I believe. It’s the way the law currently works.

    The law is not a theory nor an opinion. It is what it is.

    And it’s the IF that is the problem of the scenario that you present.

    You can talk to the guy who wants to pollute, and then to the guy who doesn’t want you to pollute and then to the government regulators and you’ll get three different views of how things ought to be.

    And only one of those counts and no it not common sense and it’s not based on the “harm” that is ostensibly done to someone if they are not allowed to pollute.

    The standard currently used is that waterways have to be healthy for humans and for the wildlife that use the habitat.

    There is no easy way to put a value on the tradeoffs of profits verses 60,000 kids with lead levels above normal in their bodies.

    There is no easy way to put a dollar value on 10 sets of nesting eagles when 20 years ago there was one nest with broken eggs in it.

    So – it is not common sense at all or at least let’s agree that your idea of common sense and other folks ideas of common sense are not the same.

    I think it is common sense not to pollute rivers to the point where fish are dying of lesions…

    clearly there are others who think this is ok because in their mind the ROI is “better”,

    I actually think it is unconscionable and the exact opposite of common sense to have a waterway so fetid that fish live such miserable and tortured existences that all of us should be ashamed to be part of a culture that finds pollution at this level – acceptable.

    If we treated a farm animal this way, we’d be brought up on charges – not to mention the dollar loss.

  60. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “let’s agree that your idea of common sense and other folks ideas of common sense are not the same.”

    How mny quotes from how many authors would I have to provide before you agree that I am not alone in my thinking? I’ll agree that people who don’t see it haven’t got any common sense.

    “I think it is common sense not to pollute rivers to the point where fish are dying of lesions…

    If it is common sense, why do we have so many rivers so polluted? We must have a lot of uncommon people.

    Of course it is common sense not to pollute the rivers to the point where they are dying of lesions. In maryland this happens, apparently because of the chicken farms. I could desperately use about 200 tons of chicken litter here as fertilizer. If you are so worried about it, how about if you go bring me some? You would solve two problems with one favor – free, no cost as JB would say.

    Except for a hundred gallons of gas each way.

    Or, you could have your buddies pass a law that says chicken litter has to be disposed of at least fifty miles form the coast. That wouldn’t be a subsidy to me, but I would at least be able to find some closer. That wouldn’t cost you anything. You might have to pay another 50 cents a pound for chickens, though.

    The bears and the deer and raccons come down to my ponds to drink. Because of the drought those ponds are fetid scum infested puddles, but the animals take what they can get. I think it is a shame to let the animals suffer that way, but I can’t afford to fix the ponds the way they should be. The first time some environmentalist shows up and offers to actually help, I’ll start changing my attitude.

    I’m not talking about gross problems like fish lesions, and you know it. There are plenty of object lessons in just the sort of well meaning disasters I’ve described, if you just look around.

    But first you have to believe they exist, and know what to look for.

    I think fish lesions are terrible, but what happens if we spend so much money on fish lesions that we miss something even more important?

    We have to agree on how to measure and eveluate these things, and there are major international commissions working on just that. You might want to get your two cents in, but you won’t if you don’t understand the process.

    If we agree on how to measure, then we can argue for our priorities as a matter of facts instead of ill-defined and revokable “rights” that don’t standu up to the light of day, let alone the laws of physics, anyway.

    In the end, we might still prioritize things wrong and blow the whole ball of wax, but at least we tried to make sense instead of mysticism out of what we are faced with.

    Even then, if we figure all that out, we can still be snuffed out by a neutron beam from 400 million light years away, or something else we never thought of yet.

    We can afford a little humility and practicality in our efforts to save the planet.

    RH

  61. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Here is the way the law is supposed to work. It is official policy as implementation of NEPA and other laws.

    “The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines “environmental justice” as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws regulations and policies.”

    That IS the law, Larry. How it is actually implemented may be some perversion of that, pased on current political realities, but such a case only proves my point.

    RH

  62. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I might point out that ONE reason I haven’t got the money to fix the ponds is because a bunch of environmentalists who think they know what is best also think it is FAIR for some people to pay twice as much in taxes as they get in services. AND be stewards of the land for them, for free, less than free, in fact.

    RH

  63. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “How mny quotes from how many authors would I have to provide before you agree that I am not alone in my thinking? I’ll agree that people who don’t see it haven’t got any common sense.”

    who was it that said that just because a bunch of folks believe something that it don’t make it true?

    and to tweak you a bit… isn’t the academicians and theorists who are often characterized as lacking “common sense”?

    The current law standard is not “common sense” which is a totally subjective nor is it ROI.

    Instead it is the health of the river.

    And yes.. the reasons we have fish with lesions is because of the way the law operated previously which is the way you are currently advocating which is.. pollution is allowed until we see the damage.

    It’s not the chickens in Md. We have chickens in Va and WVa and fish with lesions in the Shenandoah. The problem is that we have TOO MUCH manure and the rivers cannot assimilate it all.

    Using your own analogy.. I would ask you .. what should be done?

    Should the manure be trucked somewhere else or should the chickens be trucked somewhere else or should the manure be used to generate energy?

    Your view has been.. that the chicken farmers are ENTITLED because until we can show that fish lesions are more costly than the Chicken producers profits then we cannot restrict them.

    Further.. you have advocated that even if we could prove a higher cost that the Chicken producers are “grandfathered” and we have to pay them to no longer pollute.

    And perhaps on this we might agree.

    The net result of the way the law currently works is that Chicken producers ultimately will start having to use costly environmental widgets that will reduce the pollution and the cost will be passed on to chicken eaters just as other required environmental widgets for power plants is passed on.

    right?

  64. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: Environmental Justice

    RH – you need to go read WHY the Environmental Justice law was written in the first place.

    After you find out, get back in touch.

    It’s not what you think.

  65. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: your pond

    see.. you’re trying to link all kinds of things that you perceive as not being fair and to interchangeably use them as justifications for specific issues that have nothing to do with them.

    The law about ponds – is about ponds not about your taxes and services.

    The law about ponds is about what is best for the environment and safety.

    and you are flat wrong about the “environmentalists” whom you routinely confuse with State regulators.

    Last time I checked, very few folks consider State regulators as “environmentalists” and in fact, most folks consider the regulators on the side of polluters because their job is NOT to deny permits but to grant them.

    If no permits were allowed at all, most of the State regulators would not have a job because their job is to review applications.

    Aren’t you willing to admit that State Regulators are not environmentalists?

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