Imagine there were no law against arson and we were trying to figure out a way to stop it.
One way would be to require people to pay for the right to burn down buildings.
Another would be to issue a strictly limited number of tradable arson-permission certificates, which would-be arsonists could trade among themselves.
Burning fossil fuels isn’t the same as burning houses.
Unlike arson, the combustion of oil, natural gas, coal and other fossil fuels provides real benefits — running our cars, heating and cooling our homes and so on.
Persons:
Let’s
Organizations:
“