go the greens!, page-27

There is no balance WangChung. Our way of life is unsustainable. Reaping big profits now to the detriment of our future is not good economic management. I'm sure you are familiar with the Stern and Garnaut reports? Happy to dismiss them though?

What is wrong with a user pays system? Surely this is the basis of capitalism? If you pollute the atmosphere then you should build in to your cost model the costs to clean it up. But there is a market distortion at the moment - anyone can pump GHG's into the atmosphere for free. It is a glaring externality. Future generations will have to pay to clean this up. Not only that, fossil fuels, the main culprit, are heavily subsidised.

Why are so called free-marketeers happy to throw out one of the basic principles of the free market... that of 'user pays'? It seems very ironic to me. What actually is wrong with the principle of cleaning up your own waste? Why is there such hypocrisy on this issue?

We have a distorted market that promotes pollution. This is not a workable balance. Anyone with a responsible attitude toward economics would agree with that, unless they are a total disbeliever in the science of climate change, in which case we will be unable to agree on even the most basic economic assumptions.