What Is the Cost of Fresh Air?

"Stick out your tongue and say, 'Aahhh' ..."

Putting Proper back in “Property” – Part 12

One of the broad issues underlying this series is how to maintain quality in, value of, and control over our property.  It may not be an economic law, but common sense seems to show that when something is free we tend to take it for granted, and perhaps even neglect it.  Fresh air seems to be in this category.

Sometimes, we don’t know what we have until we become aware of its absence.  Fresh air, except for the occasional natural volcanic eruption or forest fire, existed for millions of years on Earth.  Until the advent of factories and smoke stacks, human capacity to foul the air was fleeting and not a real issue.

When modern factories began to produce goods by virtue of initiating fundamental chemical changes on a grand scale, we humans entered a new age.  This is when fresh air was no longer a given; it became a commodity.  The problem was that, early on, nobody had the slightest idea how to measure it, monitor it, or regulate it.  These remain tough challenges in the present day, for air is an invisible medium in which we are naturally aswim.  We tend to take our breathable air for granted; we become accustomed to the climatic qualities, the airborne allergens, the odors and fragrances, etc. of our local environments.

Like water, air circulates throughout the environment in various ways and stages.  This essential gaseous substance that we breathe in order to stay alive is far subtler and less tangible than water and food.  The mechanism was utterly unknown and completely misunderstood until approximately 250 years ago when Joseph Priestley conducted several crucial experiments.  His seminal work led to our understanding of photosynthesis, and he was credited with the discovery of elemental oxygen.

While we may generally take our supply of air for granted, it is interesting how clear we are about its relative value for survival.  A typical human can last a week or two without any food, and can make it half as long without any water.  In contrast, the typical human will die of asphyxiation in a matter of minutes without breathable air – which we now know contains approximately 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen.

The issue of maintaining our access to fresh breathable air is obviously important.  This is why, since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, people in villages, towns, and cities have cried out against the compromising of this commodity.  While it may seem crazy to ask if we have property in fresh breathable air, sober consideration of probable alterations to our atmospheric profile, along with the related technological causes, makes this a moral imperative.  The attention of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on measuring airborne pollutants and identifying correlated pulmonary diseases is proof that we, as a society, have been doing this for some time.

If we live in or near a city, we hear that our air quality is degraded by the addition of a few parts more per million in contaminants every year that goes by.  Even as emission standards are improved by the automotive industry, and perhaps the power generation industry, growing populations and greater numbers of commuters on highways and freeways, along with the ever-increasing demand via the power grid, lead to a decline in the breathe-ability of our atmosphere.  In the past couple of decades, we have even witnessed the vilification of a natural by-product of human respiration: carbon dioxide.  Whether we include that compound or not in the mix of anthropogenic (man-made) irritants and undesirable compounds, we must be clear that purity standards are essential to our long-term health.

Before dealing with some possible approaches to monitoring or assuring air quality, let me propose an analogy that might drive home the nature of our right to fresh air.  Recall that each of us has property in his/her own body.  Our bodies are the origin of all our extensive property – via the Lockean principle of mixing mind, body, and spirit with environmental resources to create a beneficial outcome.  Each of us has property that exists alongside – if not wholly within – a fluid mass that is life-giving: the atmosphere.  This is very much akin to a landholder who has land running alongside a river.  The owner has riparian rights to the water in the river.  Similarly, we each have “riparian” rights to the oxygen (and nitrogen) circulating beside us in the atmosphere.

I made this point, not to state the utterly obvious but, to suggest that the nature of our rights are riparian in nature.  Whatever general riparian principles hold in the realm of water issues may well be applicable as we navigate the controversies bound to arise around air quality.  One of the most obvious elements in the canon of water rights is the prohibition regarding diminishment of purity … of “freshness” – meaning healthy, natural, and pleasant.

If, through chemical analysis and scrutiny of medical records over a long enough period of time, a causal connection can be shown between cancer formation and atmospheric emissions from particular industrial plants, is this not grounds for serious legal action?  What if the issue is more subjective in nature – the odor, for instance of living down wind of a paper factory or a petroleum refinery?  Should innocent bystanders and residents be subjected to such noxious fumes?  In what way can we identify and define the limits of our reasonable tolerance?

Historically, there has been a give and take attitude around living in a community that has factories in its midst.  Certain trade-offs were granted due to the economic benefits via jobs and increased economic activity for local businesses.  Foul odors, atmospheric haze, and acid rain are obvious negative by-products of some industrial processes, and the loss of fresh air, to a significant degree, is part of the price some of us have been willing to pay.

In economics, these are known as “hidden costs,” although in certain communities these have never been anything but conspicuous and obvious.  Tolerance was not so much granted as it was tacitly accepted by the mass of citizens, for the governmental authorities in various industrial districts tended to be closely associated with the people that owned the factories.

All of this talk about air pollution and the fact that nobody likes it doesn’t do any good unless it helps us effect policy changes for the better.  In other words, I’m wasting time unless I can offer a better way for us to manage our property in fresh air.

Consider this article, if you will, the first step in proclaiming a more definite standard of ownership of this essential commodity.  Short of bottling it up and walking about with scuba-like tanks, we must devise ways to assure ourselves of pleasantly breathable air.  We must be forever tending toward a more aggressive stance in demanding that problematic sources – such as transportation hubs, factories, refineries, industrial and agricultural concerns, etc. – follow the highest reasonable emission standards.  Independent scientific studies and private industrial monitoring agencies are the tools by which we can legally bind companies to internalize the previously hidden costs mentioned above.

As more companies begin assuming the full responsibility of covering their environmental tracks – on land, water, and air – the prices of their products will undoubtedly go up.  The good news is that then we turn over the decision-making process of cost and benefit (of each set of products) to the justice of the Free Market.

What if a so-called “great” product, which had heretofore been manufactured in an overly-tolerant community – one that involuntarily and grudgingly took on the costs of stink, haze, and cancer – were to be reintroduced on the market after serious upgrades of emission filters at the factory, at a much higher price?  Odds are that it would attract far fewer buyers.  Then, we might see more rational market feedback via individuals choosing away from that product, toward alternative (cleaner) products.

Such high-cost products would either fade completely from the market, or they would necessarily undergo serious reinvestment in research and development, and necessarily be capitalized over a much longer period of time.  Finally, a citizenry that is better educated in regard to its property, and all the rights implicit therein, will not only be satisfied by a longer invention-to-distribution product cycle, it will be wary of anything less.