On Resource Trading

I was watching part two of the TV version of The Corporation last week. Comments from Michael Walker, who is president of the obviously neo-liberal think tank the Fraser Institute was talking about how wonderful the world could be if we would just commoditise natural resources.

I can't remember his exact words, but basically he said, if we could take the current pollution levels and grant licenses to the polluters and sell licenences for similair levels to others, there is an incentive for the organizations to reduce their pollution. Or, they can buy excess usage from lesser polluters with licences. The more we do this the better.

My thoughts are this. How can we continue to allow the devastation of our environment to people who have the most money?

Would Michael Walker happily drink a glass of water that I had pissed in, if I told him that I bought a licence from someone who hadn't pissed in their glass of water?

Tags:

• corporation
• pollution
• environment