We all own the air and water, and have equal ownership of the right to pollute it, or to insist on limits on pollution. Likewise, other natural resources. We have a right to use them, and place limits on their use, to prevent degradation over time.

Those who actually do pollute or take natural resourrces can be made to pay a fee, to compensate the people for the degradation they cause in the value of natural resources, by using a portion of the available resource for themselves, and thereby preclude others from using that portion.

The fee proceeds can be shared among all people equally. We could use it to fund our personal needs, or to fund our favorite choices for public works and programs.

the following is from Economic Externalities and the History of Life

When some member cells of a multi-cellular organism begin to take resources from the larger organism and promote their own growth without returning a proportional amount of resources or benefits to the larger organism, we say that there is a cancer in the organism.

When some members of human society perform actions that promote their own interests while failing to consider the adverse impacts of their actions, we might say they are pursuing profit in a capitalist system. The adverse impacts on the larger community that result from actors' pursuit of self-interest are known as negative externalities. Negative economic externalities occur because we have not yet established appropriate forms of communication between actors and the larger community that would inform the actors about the adverse impacts of their actions in ways that would cause them to curtail those actions and reduce or eliminate the adverse impacts.

While we fail to inform economic actors about the adverse impacts of their actions, we also mis-inform them about, or needlessly deter them from, actions which they might perform in their own interest even when those actions are not particularly detremental to the larger community. For example, income taxes deter people from seeking more income, even when doing so produces no harm to the larger community but might actually benefit the community.

A shift of the tax burden from goods, such as income and sales, to bads, such as pollution and resource depletion, could eliminate the cancer of human society known as 'economic externalities'.

Read more about it at:

Gaia Brain and the History of Life

Direct Democratic Ownership of Natural Resources: A Capitalism-Communism Synthesis

Quantum Mechanics of Gaia Brain

Walter Cronkite for President

Why Cronkite does not run

. Can we take a hint? He would accept a draft