Neoclassical Gas Mainstream, or “neoclassical,” economic theory considers itself to have solutions to these problems—solutions centered as always on “free markets.” The idea is that if firms create chronic health problems or combustible tap water, market forces should drive up their costs, as landowners learn of these firms’ practices and demand higher payment for drilling. But as seen above, even households that have already leased their land for gas development remain unaware of the identities and effects of the obscure synthetic chemicals to which they are exposed. This informational asymmetry—the firms know things the landowners don’t—significantly attenuates the ability of landowners to make informed choices.
On the other hand, households that are located near a drill pad but uninvolved in licensing the drilling will experience the ill effects as externalities. Neoclassicals suggest these can be fixed through a better property-rights system, where surrounding individuals can sue drillers for injuring their health. But this solution runs up against another problem: proving cause-and-effect from a drilling pad to a particular individual’s health problems is extremely difficult. The tobacco industry notoriously made this point in court for many years, arguing that it was impossible to prove if a man’s lung cancer was caused by a four-pack-a-day cigarette habit, as opposed to, say, local auto exhaust. If cause-and-effect is hard to prove in court for cigarettes, doing so for air-delivered volatile organic compounds will be almost impossible. full: http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2013/0713larson.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
