ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS

PART I

Life without our surrounding environment will in no way amount to anything profitable. A capitalist will definitely agree to this notion. So why degrade it? Environmental conservation or protection does not advocate complete preservation. We are expected to take from the earth's resources reserve as much as we can replace. The problem is our tendency to do otherwise. We scoop and dig and devour without replenishing. This is a crime against the environment and it is punishable by starvation or total economic embargo. In a corrupt and selfish world, environmental laws are only portraits on our shelves which we consult when things get out of hand. Only a few apologists find delight in studying and enforcing them. Someone has to pay the penalty for negligence at the end. We have series of environmental challenges. They include the sudden rise in temperature, desertification, extinction of rare species which we are mostly responsible for, air pollution, loss of drinking water due to water pollution etc. When our environment is destroyed, we go all the way down with it. We are too dependent on it. This means we cannot do without it. It supplies us water, air and food. Trees around us provide materials we need to build shelters and make our clothing. They also shelter us from harsh weathers. The soil beneath our feet holds our water, enriches our food crops and supports our development. So we owe almost everything to mother nature. We must then do what ever we must do to protect, conserve and sustain her. 

ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS

The bulk of environmental law stems from the distinction in economics between perceived costs and social costs. The basic idea is this: a company makes decisions based on the costs it faces. When a company contributes towards pollution, without environmental law there is no obvious, tangible cost. However, that pollution may later lead to very real costs such as medical bills for victims of pollution or decreased efficiency of agricultural land. The company essentially passed these costs — called social costs or negative externalities — off to somebody else, who is now left footing the part of the bill for the company’s operations while the company alone enjoys the profits.

Environmental law serves to create rules that shift social costs back to the companies that cause them. Attorneys working in environmental law have helped develop innovative legal theories to achieve this goal. In addition to simple limits on certain pollutants, lawyers in environmental law have come up with systems like cap-and-trade and environmental trusts. In a cap-and-trade system, companies who find ways to avoid pollution are given credits which they can sell to companies who do pollute. The companies who do pollute must either find technical ways to offset their pollution or purchase credits. In an environmental trust, environmental objects such as rivers are given lawyers who can sue polluters in court for money which is placed in a trust dedicated to maintaining the local environment and ecology of the environmental object.

It is therefore important that set laws are enforced. That way we are sure to sustain our existence on this green planet