I’m sure everyone will agree that reducing air pollution would be a very good thing, especially in the short term for urban areas around the world. Not everyone agrees on the gravity of pollution in the long term. Even within the environmentalist community there is disagreement. The recent UN report differs quite a bit from Al Gore’s apocalyptic predictions in “Inconvenient Truth.”

The real question I think pertains to how do you effect real change across the globe without creating very coercive government restrictions that would cause economic hardship. Regulating powerplant emissions and SuperFund sites hasn’t been easy for the US government. Try regulating the energy usage by every citizen. Can you imagine the government apparatus necessary to encourage compliance in the use of cars, light bulbs, HVAC, kitchen appliances, etc? And what about other countries, especially those in the developing world that are emitting huge quantities of pollution themselves? Whatever face they put on for the Kyoto accord, I doubt you’ll see China or Russia abandon their pollution-producing infrastructure in a timely fashion. Environmentalism is a luxury for rich western countries. The rest of the world is still trying to emerge from shacks and shanties and get through their own Industrial Revolutions.

The fact is that change will be influenced largely by the market with SOME government intervention. That may come in the form of tax incentives or limited regulation of uses of energy (i.e. CAFE standards on cars). When people can buy energy-saving (money-saving) products that perform as well as their older, energy-hungry products, they will. And pollution will be reduced. It should be pointed out that the US has already cut their own pollution output in half over the past 30 years. This, as the US economy has outgrown other western countries year after year. More on that stat here:

[Link: usinfo.state.gov]