Clean Air Dumbth

The July 25, 2017 edition of the Guardian newspaper in the UK has an article titled “Britain to ban sale of all diesel and petrol cars and vans from 2040.” The article mentions that France intends to do this, too.

Banning products or activities with undesired emissions is an example of the stupidity of Governments and the environmentalists that push them.

Undesirable emissions have adverse consequences, but also have benefits. Banning a product or activity is equivalent to saying that the social cost of its emissions is infinite in relation to its benefit, which is ridiculous. A rational emissions policy would balance benefit and cost.

An incremental pound of undesirable emissions has the same incremental adverse consequences no matter what product or activity it comes from. A rational emissions policy’s target would be to achieve the same incremental benefit per incremental pound of emissions across all products and activities for every person for whatever total pounds of undesirable emission there are. This occurs naturally in a free market if undesirable emissions are priced, e.g. through a per pound tax, because rational people set marginal benefit equal to marginal cost. The tax rate would determine the total amount of undesirable emissions and the tax structure would lead to an optimal allocation of usage.

Unfortunately, it is not just about the UK, France, and auto emissions. The same stupidity occurs with many other similar issues, e.g. what to do about climate change, and with many other countries. Almost every time Governments or activists get involved with deciding what to do, their solutions are just about as stupid as a ban.