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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Steve Lokness who wrote (9729)2/18/2012 7:40:13 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 85487
 
If a company pollutes and you get sick - your liberty is being infringed on I would say.

I'm not sure I'd say its your liberty that's been infringed on, but you certainly have been infringed on, and I wouldn't object much to someone using your specific way of stating the issue.

My point is hardly "pollution is ok", or "respect for liberty demands that we allow pollution". But rather that pollution isn't a binary thing (other forms of nuisance aren't either which was also part of the point, but maybe I'll stick with just pollution for now to make the post shorter). There isn't no pollution, then one extra molecule of substance X, and you have horrible pollution. You have gradually increasing potential for harm. Some of the cases of actual or alleged pollution may talk about part per billion, potentially parts per trillion of some substance. Others might deal with higher concentrations, say parts per million, or parts per hundred thousand, but where the harm is questionable, or where the substance already has some prevalence in nature. Allowing emissions like Bhopal to be legal would be dangerous and ridiculous, but on the other end at the margin you could reasonable argue about what is considered aggression. Bhopal, or Chernobyl isn't the marginal case. I'm talking about the marginal case.