The Relationship Between Market Mechanisms And Enviromental Degradation

One of the themes of this essay will of course be to define what a market is. It is different things to different people but it is the meaning of the word as it applies on a global scale that we are interested in.

How do ‘markets’ effect the environment? Is it for the good or bad? Surely if the latter is true, then governments should be held more accountable? But does the Government control all markets?

And finally the last point that will be addressed is the fact that the damage to the environment may be already beyond redemption. Are the changes in the weather and the increasing threat of Global Warming a warning of worst things to come? Or are they more of an irreversible trend caused by the pollution that industrialised nations have been pouring into the atmosphere for years. If that is so is there indeed anything that can be done to repair the damage that has been caused.

The first points to be addressed are the definition of a market and exactly how those markets work in relation to to-day, also what effect these markets have on the environment.

One of the first things that will be explained is what is a ‘market’. There ar

The commodities that people trade in do not have to be seen. They could be a service for example the services of a cleaner or a tutor for your children, they could be electricity or gas, although the gas flame is slightly easier to see.

In conclusion, there are solutions to the problems of environmental degradation. Imposing taxes on governments and companies that do not keep within set limits of greenhouse gas emissions. Also making those that own the forests and fish the seas responsible for replenishment, so as to leave the future generations a decent planet on which to live.

That is to say the ‘goods’ that a market trades in should be at a price that everybody can afford. Also those goods should be the things that everybody requires. Those markets do not have to be physical places; they need not be somewhere that people can see. They could be, and in certain cases are these day’s, run from the Internet, or even a small office, trading in millions of pounds worth of commodities,

There is also the question of exhaustible resources (OU p103). If there is over fishing or there is too much coal or oil taken from one place the producers do not bear full responsibility for that over production. There is no way that a coalfield can reproduce as fast as need dictates It takes thousands, if not millions of years to create. The same, (although the time scale is less) applies to forests, if no one is responsible for their replanting then eventually the will become wasteland and scrub. The same applies to fishing there has to

Some topics in this essay:
Adam Smith, , Global Warming, environmental degradation, reasonable price, greenhouse gas emissions, reasonable price buyers, price buyers, gas emissions, risk losing, market people, greenhouse gas, future generations, production methods,