Boostrapping : EAS.11 - EAS over Pollutants
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Proposed administrative procedure - EAS.11
Equal   Allowance   System   over   Pollutants

Purpose : To reduce nexusproness in the administrative procedures dealing with pollutants.

Pre-requiste readings :
  • EAS.01 -- Equal Allowance System over Underground Water
  • R L P P.

      Contents

    1. Background
    2. Basic Dogma behind EAS.11
    3. Example-1 : EAS over Sulphur Dioxide Emissions
    4. Example-2 : EAS over Pouring Dyes in Water
    5. Draft of the act to create procedure EAS.11

    Background

    The purpose is to reduce poverty, without taxing the rich. How? By ensuring that every citizen gets equitable share in the "rent" or "deemed rent" of natural resource. How? I have proposed several laws to enable that. EAS.11 is one of these proposed laws.


    Basic Dogma behind EAS.11

    The basic Dogma is : All have equal rights to pollute the Earth.

    The Equal Allowance System for Pollutants provide the procedures needed implement the above Dogma. For any pollutant that can be measured and is permitted to the industry in certain limited quantity, it is possible to have EAS it. The details of the EAS will vary from pollutant to pollutant based on the phycial nature of pollutants, whom it hurts, how it can be measured etc. I will give two examples
    1. EAS over sulphur dioxide emissions
    2. EAS over dye pollution (in rivers)

    Example-1 : EAS over Sulphur Dioxide Emissions The overview of this administrative procedure is as follows
    1. The CM will appoint a Pollution Control Minister (as today)

    2. The Minister will appoint 1 Registrar and 1 Pollution Guard for every District. He may appoint same person for more than one district. The citizens can replace them using RLPP.

    3. Each citizen will have a Sulphur Dioxide Allowance. Using RLPP, the citizen may Allocate that Allowance to any registered Sulphur Dioxide producing factory by visiting the Registrar’s office.

    4. The Minister and the Department Secretaries, will decide how many kilograms of Sulphur Dioxide each Allowance will carry.

    5. A factory, in a given month, can emit Sulphur Dioxide depending on the Allowances they have obtained from the citizens.

    6. If a factory owner is emitting more Sulphur Dioxide than the Allowances he has, the Pollution Guard can summon him before a Jury. The Jury can shut the factory down and/or impose a fine.

    Example : Say the Minister has set the SO2 Allowance as 5kg per citizen per month. And a factory needs to emit say 200,000kg of SO2 to sustain its production. Then that factory will need to obtain 40000 SO2-Allowances.

    How will Pollution Guard decide how much Sulphur Dioxide was emitted by a factory? Typically, the emission is due to consumption of certain raw materials. And by forcing the factory-owners to keep a log of the amount of material that was consumed by the factory, the emission level can be decided.

    Now citizens gain ONLY if factory-owners buy Allowance, which will happen ONLY if the Pollution Guard enforces the limit. Thus, the citizens will ensure that Guard is working round the clock to enforce the Allowance. If not, citizens will replace him using RLPP.

    Since the polluters have to buy Allowance and almost all citizens have equal number of Allowance, the economic gains of polluting will get evenly distributed in the same way the environmental damages get equally distributed.

    Will this decrease the SO2 pollution? Yes. To increase the cash value of Allowance, the citizens would pressurize the Minister to reduce the number of kilograms allowed in one SO2 Allowance. This will increase the price of Allowance. But factory-owners will try to do just the opposite. If the kilogram amount per Allowance is unrealistically low, the factory-owners will simply close down the factories. Again this is something citizens cannot afford as they are dependent on factories for goods, jobs ande cash coming from SO2 Allowances. Eventually, some middle ground will get worked out. Also, the Pollution Guard, being afraid of explusion by RLPP and Jury Trials, will rigidly enforce the limits. And so the industries, to reduce the costs involved in purchasing the Allowances, will try to use ways to reduce the SO2 emissions. This will reduce the pollution.


    Example-2 : EAS over pouring dyed water in river

    Suppose a river is flowing through 10 districts, with combined population of say 100 lakhs. And there are 500 dye factories in those districts. Now even after filtering and purification, traces of dyes are bound to remain in water that these factories will throw in the river. Following are proposed administrative procedures to conrtrol
    1. As per EAS over water pollutants, these 10 districts together will form a segment. The CM will appoint the Pollution Minister (as today) who will appoint a Registrar and Pollution Gaurd for this segment.

    2. The citizens residing in the segment can replace the Pollution Guard using RLPP.

    3. Each citizen would have a Allowance which he may sell to any of the factories. The committee consisting of the 10 District Sarpanchs will decide the number of kilograms of dyeing material a Allowance will carry.

    4. A citizen can allocate his Allowance to any factory using RLPP. Depending on the number of Allowances a factory has, a factory can throw certain kilogram of the pollutants into water and no more.

    5. the citizens who are closer to the end of the river will have more Allowance than those who are closer to the source. So suppose a river starts in District A and passes through B and ends in C. Then citizens in C would have more Allowances than those in B wjo should have more Allowance than those in A. This is becuase residents of C suffer from the water pollution than residents of B who suffer more than residents of A.

    This way citizens can equitably divide the economic benefits of pollution. Now since all factory owners will try to reduce the expenditure they have to incur in buying Allowance, they will all search and use technology to reduce pollution. And so due to scale of economy, the cost of that technology will decrease. Gradually, the pollution level will decrease.

    How will it effect the dyeing industry? Will it die or survive?

    Say, today a white shirt is Rs. 100 and a colored shirt is just Rs. 110. That is because pollution is cheap. The EAS over Water Pollutants will make pollution expensive and so the colored shirt will become Rs. 150. This adds an economic burden on one who buys colored shirts. This burden is fair, as he is polluting the river more that someone who wears white shirts. As number of kilograms of dye per Allowance decreases, the price of colored shirt will increase. Now one of the two things will happen: 1)eighter the factory-owners will deploy a technology that will reduce pollution OR 2)consumption of colored shirts will go down, but not to zero.

    So in any case, the pollution will reduce. But the dyeing industry will NOT close down altogather.


    Draft of the act to create procedure EAS.11

    I have NOT been able to create one draft, that would create EAS.11 for ALL pollutants, or even most important pollutants. IMO, for each group of pollutant, a seperate draft would be needed. I have drafted two drafts, one to be passded in Parliament and another in Assembly to eanct EAS.11 for water pollutants. I have drafted the texts for both. To see the drafts, please click here.

         Now citizens can ask MPs/MLAs to pass these Acts. But IMO, it will be wiser for citizens to first enact procedure LM.02 and LM.03, and then use LM.02-03 to pass this EAS.11 drafts WITHOUT any help from MPs and MLAs. To know about procedure LM.02, please click here and to know about procedure LM.03, please click here.


    If you have any other question, please mail it to MehtaRahulC@yahoo.com. Thousand thanks in advance.



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