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Comment by jschwartzi | Hacker News Reader

What if your neighbor was dumping liquid radioactive waste on your land, right outside your house? Greenhouse gases should be considered harmful pollution, and because they eliminate vast swathes of habitable land they should be treated similarly to other forms of toxic waste.

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I understand your general comparison to toxic waste. The problem is not the comparison, it's the level of specificity. If someone is dumping an amount of say Parathion on my lawn, it is well within our ability to accurately determine the nature and amount of damage to me and my property given the amount and frequency of the dumping. And given that, it's a short step to monetizing the damage. In terms of accuracy, can we say the same for carbon? I don't believe we can. So while there may be a valid comparison at a high level, when it gets to actually determining damages to individuals or society, we just aren't there imo.

I realize the simulations we're using to extrapolate the potential damage are just that -- extrapolations. However, we've been using the actual effects of the existing warming to improve those simulations. These simulations are increasingly indicating that we will raise sea levels by several meters, and that vast swathes of temperate land will become uninhabitable. While we don't know for certain this will happen, the hazards posed in the event that it does happen mean we need to take steps now.

If it could be reasonably expected the dumper knew Parathion were toxic at certain levels in the groundwater and they continued to increase those amounts, it would be reasonable to sanction them before the levels become unsafe. If you only apply sanctions after the damage is done, the sanctions don't really do anything. The best thing to do is to try to mitigate the risk rather than waiting for more information.

I agree 100%. For some reason environmental discussions always have to include the "cost" to business in the decision whether we do anything about it.

I imagine if I told my neighbor that I felt it was cost prohibitive to pay for trash pickup service, so I was just going to dump my trash in their yard, they'd have a problem with that. Why do we allow companies to pollute water, land and air that doesn't belong to them?

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