`The costs of attending to environmental problems are simply too high - they cannot be justified` debate

THE COSTS OF ATTENDING TO ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS ARE SIMPLY TOO HIGH - THEY CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED` DEBATE

The need to address current global environmental problems like air and water pollution , degradation of forests , emission of greenhouse gases desertification , and depletion of biodiversity , is perhaps one that is without contention . The evident results of environmental degradation and pollution leading to climate change with its devastating effects melting of the arctic ice , extinction of animal and plant species and other serious consequences are not just issues that have taken center stage in the

media , but more importantly , they have become an everyday existential reality in the world today . In spite of the obvious need to address environmental problems however , there is a seemingly high cost of such undertaking and this has served as a stumbling block to attempts at addressing the environmental problems facing the world presently , and in the foreseeable future

Swift (2000 ) has for instance argued that current environmental regulations in place , though they have had some positive results in bringing about cleaner air and water , and better health , the narrow technological choices employed by these regulations have resulted in unnecessary high costs . The cost of environmental cleanup programs in closed US military bases as of 1996 alone was estimated to be 3 .4 billion and this figure was expected to rise above 11 billion in subsequent years (United States General Accounting Office , 1996 ) For developed countries like the US , such expenditures would be manageable if even costly . However , for many developing and least developed countries where some of the most serious environmental degradations are taking place , investing billions of dollars in technologies aimed at addressing serious problems of environmental degradation is a luxury they cannot afford . Competing developmental , economic , health and educational needs may take precedence over adoption of technologies that are less harmful to the environment

The current high cost in using new technologies that are more environmentally friendly is again brought to the fore by Swift (2000 who argues that : Nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants could be significantly reduced if old sources and new sources were not treated differently - as they are under current law - and if laws and regulations didn 't offer significant advantages to selected technologies , placing the highest burdens on the cleanest technologies (para . 2

Sceptics like Singer (1999 ) have also questioned the consensus that CO2 emissions through human actions have a direct link to global warming Thus if Singer 's scepticism is anything to go by , one could say that heavy taxes imposed on industries that emit CO2s and new technologies being manufactured to replace high CO2 pollutants are an unnecessary cost . Singer (1999 ) for instance further argues thus

What about the association of climate change with atmospheric greenhouse gases ? On the time-scale of hundreds of millions of years carbon dioxide has sharply declined its concentration was as much as 20 times the present value at the beginning of the Cambrian Period , 600 million years ago ) Yet the climate has not varied all...