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Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch
Apparently, such a thing exists. Read all about it here.
Seems to me that anything that imposes substantial externalities re: landfills, "ocean garbage patches", air quality, climate change, etc. is an appropriate target for Pigouvian taxation, and we probably don't do enough of such taxation, considering that we have too much of such "bads" we could tax and considering we need to increase revenues and will probably do so to some extent by increasing taxation of some "goods" (work and investment).
4 comments:
There's a documented patch in three of the five gyres, but the North Pacific one is the best studied.
Perhaps we should have a Pigouvian tax on plastics (or some relevant subset of plastics) and use the funds to address the problem.
@ Brooks - VT, CT, MA, ME, and 7 other states have a tax on a subset of plastic usage, namely beverage bottles.
Unsurprisingly, NH does not.
PeakVT, Thanks for that info.
Seems to me that anything that imposes substantial externalities re: landfills, "ocean garbage patches", air quality, climate change, etc. is an appropriate target for Pigouvian taxation, and we probably don't do enough of such taxation, considering that we have too much of such "bads" we could tax and considering we need to increase revenues and will probably do so to some extent by increasing taxation of some "goods" (work and investment).
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