The sign in this photo points out a depressing irony. While BP seems to clearly understand that people should be responsible for their own messes at their gas stations, they may not intend to fully clean up their own mess in the Gulf. Most likely, billions of tax dollars will go to cleaning up the BP spill. A concept that I don’t think many people understand is that of COMMON ASSETS. About ten years ago I did a logo for an organization called the Common Assets Defense Fund. The idea is that companies that profit from harming the environment should pay for their environmental impact. When the government pays to clean up environmental damage created by corporations, in essence, tax dollars are subsidizing for profit companies. A concept similar to Common Assets Defense is Cap and Trade. Cap and trade is one method for regulating and ultimately reducing the amount of pollution emitted into the atmosphere. It is viewed as a more democratic solution to regulating pollution than a carbon tax as it creates a commodity out of the right to emit carbon and allows the commodity to be traded on the free market. Ironically, the conservatives who are usually advocates of free market principles fight cap and trade as stifling business… it seems they prefer the current corporate welfare, or at least government subsidy of corporate interests. I am more worried about pollution stifling the survival of the planet. The biggest obstacle to the passage of cap and trade is corporate lobbyists. Corporations spend huge amounts of money to influence legislation. Most people who oppose cap and trade are either on a corporate payroll, or are worried about corporations passing their environmental clean-up costs on to the consumer. The latter is a real possibility, but an even more likely result would be the corporations trying to be cleaner to avoid the penalties and save money in the first place. My friend Adam Werbach who was the youngest president of the Sierra Club, and the person I worked with on the Common Assets Defense Fund, has recently consulted Wal-Mart on their greening effort. I’m no fan of Wal-Mart, but they are getting greener to SAVE MONEY, possibly in anticipation of cap and trade passing, but either way, they are saving money and being less destructive to the planet. I think green technology may need to initially be subsidized, but ultimately its development will be driven by market forces if cap and trade is in place. Thanks for caring.
-Shepard