The External Costs Of Energy Use: Internalization Without The State?

(1) The protection of the environment has become one of the most important challenges of our time. No one can seriously deny that the industrialized nations in particular have caused enormous damage to the environment by the way in which their economies function, and by the manner in which they produce and consume. This damage now directly threatens the very basis of our life on this planet. Even worse, numerous studies show that the reckless exploitation of nature is continuing virtually unabated and on a global scale. The constant rise in world energy consumption is one of the main causes of this damage. The associated emission of a number of hazardous pollutants is endangering nearly all of life’s sustaining media — the air, soil, and water — and with them, humankind and the Earth’s flora and fauna.