The Government's Role in Saving Our Environment

Should a country's government make laws against harming the environment, or should there just be various kinds of financial incentives given to individuals who live environmentally conscious life-styles?

Today, our world faces a crisis that was not attended to sufficiently in the past. With the rate of pollution that we are releasing into our atmosphere, into our water, and onto our land, we are facing consequences.  We are watching our poles melt from global warming, we are losing fresh water sources, and seeing our cities get ruined with immense amounts of garbage and litter.  Despite the damage to natural resources, individuals still aren't motivated enough to start living more environmentally healthy lives.  This is because it is more expensive to live environmentally conscious life-styles.

It is obvious that someone needs to make people think about what they are doing to our world.  The pollution that humans create is an externality. (The definition of a negative externality is a spillover cost that has to get paid eventually even if people did not agree to the action that creates that cost).  No one is paying to cover this cost now, but we will all pay soon with the loss of our resources.

I believe that in order for people to be more conscious about how important it is to save our environment, our government needs to get involved.  It is the only structure that has the money and ability to reach every household. However, our government cannot make this change through creating new laws. When a government makes its citizens protect their environment through laws, it can lead to laws that are inconvenient and expensive for citizens. If the government feels that everyone should only buy goods that were manufactured without releasing a lot of pollution, it probably means that the goods are more expensive.  This leads to a large percent of the country probably not being able to pay for them.   

Our government shouldn’t try to protect the environment with laws, but rather to create incentives to live environmentally friendly lives by rewarding the people who do so.  The government can give tax cuts or free public parking to individuals who live by the environmentally friendly standards that the government recommends. Whatever the benefit might be, people need to realize that not only are they helping their world and their future generations by making environmentally conscious decisions, but that they can also benefit (financially) in the short term.  

If people do not want to live environmentally healthy lives because of the financial costs for doing so, then simple economic incentives like saving money on taxes is an attractive way for a government to convince its citizens to help the world.