End Pollution Now!

As we pretend we have a problem called global warming, or cooling, or whatever, we ignore the real problem of pollution, and its massive detriment to our environment.  There are many pollutants, nasty ones, that nobody checks for, for the simple reason it would be gainst public policy to do so.  So no one will.

Here in 2009, writes an MIT scientist:

Estrogens take a variety of forms, the most potent of which are “free” estrogens—so called because they freely pass into cells and bind with estrogen receptors, initiating a cascade of biological responses. One particularly potent synthetic free estrogen, 17α-ethynylestradiol, has been widely used in birth control pills since the 1960s. Hans Inhoffen and his colleagues at Schering A.G. in Berlin first synthesized 17α-ethynylestradiol in 1938 by adding two extra carbon atoms to a standard form of estrogen. This slight difference in chemical structure makes 17α-ethynylestradiol more potent than natural estrogens, and more likely to persist in the environment.

OK, so he is looking for the harm done by teaspoons of this stuff put in the ocean by the city of Boston everyday.  Now think about something.  This is coming into the ocean when women on the pill take a whiz in Boston.  Swimming pool water is rarely if ever drained, it is recycled and cleaned.  What happens when hundreds of women each week, on the pill, take a whiz when swimming in a pool. (It happens!)  No one knows, because no one tests.  No one tests because there is no requirement to do so.  There is no requirements to do so because population control is public policy.  Mustn't terrify people of a common pollutant.

Refrigeration systems have some very nasty by products.  Government regulations require that these by-products be captured and controlled.  The industry has done so.  Good for government.  But at the same time, since it is merely politics, the government does not require very many much nastier things collected, even though we know that it is possible to do so.  How come we do not?

The regulators are always captured by the regulated.  Sure, some things of minor importance are regulated to keep things neat, but major things go untouched.  Take for instance auto pollution.  the car is an invention.  The invention can be improved to collect all of its exhaust.  The regulatd will not allow the regulators to require this.

Now, before, when property rights were respected, peple could and would sue someone who befouled their property with exhaust pollution.  If propoerty rights were respected, then the courts would side with the injured party, and the invention of the automobile would have included exhaust collection early on.  The courts began favoring big business in the late 19th century, so property rights and a clean environment went out the window.  Or pollution came in.

With property rights, polluters would have to bribe every single home owner to pollute.  It would never happen.

With government regulation, a polluter need only bribe a half dozen congressmen.  Happens all the time.  The only way we will clean up the environment is to return to property rights.

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