Humanity's burning of fossil fuels and engagement in wholesale deforestation are imposing some heavy peripheral costs on society. Because of often being incremental and largely out of sight, these costs to the environment and public health tend to go unnoticed until they become too impactful to be ignored.
If these costs were integrated into the charges for carbon use, the incentive to increase efficiency and thereby reduce emissions would be greatly enhanced. Over time, the costs would diminish.
Unfortunately, that has not been happening. Egregious examples of the failure to cope with the negative ancillary effects of fossil fuel use can be found in our consumption of gasoline and maintenance of the health of the oceans.
When motorists purchase gasoline, the price at the pump does not reflect the medical costs from adverse health effects and related premature deaths associated with the manufacture and use of the toxic-spewing product. Nor are the costs generated by pollution abatement as well as land and water degradation from drilling, mining, and other industrial activity incorporated into the gasoline price. With or without regulation, these external costs usually end up being passed on to the consumer. The problem is that the damage after the fact usually costs the public far more than if such projected costs were integrated into the market price in the first place. Higher prices tend to have a preventive effect. Consumers would be incentivized to be more efficient in their fossil fuel use, thus alleviating adverse health and environmental impacts. The public would also be more motivated to seek out clean, renewable alternate sources of energy.
As an illustration, if a dollar is added to electricity bills to pay for power plants' cleanup costs, estimates are that consumers would realize three to nine dollars of health benefits in return.
The price of fossil fuels also does not currently reflect the damaging costs that carbon use is inflicting on crucial oceanic benefits, two of which most of us are unaware of and one that we take for granted.
Thomas F. Stocker, a climate change researcher at the University of Bern Switzerland, identifies oceanic fisheries as the highly visible, but taken-for-granted benefit being threatened by seemingly unrelated carbon admissions. The fatal linkage stems from the sea water's intake of human-generated atmospheric carbon emissions, which has led to increased acidification that threatens fisheries basic to the diet of many coastal nations.
Less evident is that oceans also play a role in regulating the climate by absorbing heat from the atmosphere. Human-induced global warming has created excess heat that threatens to overwhelm the oceans' absorbent capacity and throw the climate out of kilter.
Furthermore, Stocker warns that the oceans' capacity to store excess water is being overtaxed by the melting of polar ice due to global warming. The hidden costs of losing this valuable environmental benefit are becoming increasingly visible in the form of rising sea levels that are creating havoc in coastal communities.
The price mechanism must reflect the causal relationship between carbon pollution and the full range of costs it is imposing on the general public. When that happens, the transition from a fossil fuel dependency to a clean, renewable energy based economy should gather steam.