• First, for emissions that do not cause significant damage and do not accumulate in significant concentrations, taxpayers would be charged a general fee.
• Second, in instances where incentives require altered behavior to address problems such as high ozone or carbon monoxide emissions in certain local areas, more targeted taxes would apply.
• Finally for those pollutants that have profoundly damaging impacts, regulation and perhaps criminal liability would be called for in cases of their release. These classes are labeled the “property rights zone,” the “incentive zone,” and the “regulatory zone” respectively. The model follows the growing interest and preference for pricing approaches over more heavy-handed and administratively inefficient CAC approaches.

Peter Barnes: Capitalism 3.0: Preface (pages ix.-xvi)

But who should own the sky? That question became a kind of Zen koan for me, a seemingly innocent query that, on reflection, opened many unexpected doors. I pondered the possibility of starting a planet-saving, for-profit, sky-owning business; after all, I’d done well by doing good before. When that didn’t seem right, I wondered what would happen if we, as a society, created a trust to manage the atmosphere on behalf of future generations, with present-day citizens as secondary beneficiaries. Such a trust would do exactly what Waste Management Inc. would do if it owned the sky: charge dumpers for filling its dwindling storage space. Pollution would cost more and there’d be steadily less of it. All this would happen, after the initial deeding of rights to the trust, without government intervention. But if this trust — not Waste Management Inc. or some other corporation — owned the sky, there’d be a wonderful bonus: every American would get a yearly dividend check.

This thought experiment turned into a proposal known as the sky trust and has made some political headway. It also served as the epicenter of my thinking about the commons, which led to this book. ... read the whole chapter

Peter Barnes: Capitalism 3.0 — Chapter 4: The Limits of Privatization (pages 49-63)

MANDATORY RESPONSIBILITY
I don’t think it will ever happen, but consider this scenario. Imagine Congress passes a law requiring every corporation — in exchange for limited liability — to have a triple bottom line. The law also says that at least a third of corporate directors should represent workers, nature, and communities in which the company operates. And it protects directors from lawsuits if they favor nature over profit. You’re the CEO of Acme Corporation. What changes do you make after the law takes effect?

Well, you might start by increasing your accounting budget. You’ll need, henceforth, to keep track not only of money but also of your nonmonetary impacts on society and nature. This isn’t easy, though presumably shortcuts will be developed. Next, you assign people to find ways to reduce Acme’s negative impacts on nature and society, ranking the proposals by years to payback. You budget a modest sum for the most cost-effective projects, giving preference to those with public relations value. You publish ads and reports, patting yourself on the back for doing what the law requires. And you remind your board of directors that, if they choose, they can snub offers from the likes of Charles Hurwitz and forgo large capital gains for shareholders.

All this would be well and good. But given the algorithms that still rule, how much difference would it make? And even if it did have some effect, would it make enough difference in the right ways? After all, you might spend your small green budget on one thing, while nature most needs something else.

Now, as an alternative, imagine that the price of nature is no longer zero. All of a sudden, it costs big bucks to pollute or degrade ecosystems. Overnight, your managers scramble to cut pollution and waste. The higher the price, the faster their behavior changes. And it changes in response to specific natural scarcities, as indicated by specific prices.

The question is, which of these approaches would work better — mandatory social responsibility, or increases in the price of nature? The answer, without doubt, is the latter. ... read the whole chapter