Assignment task: Answer both questions, illustrating your understanding of the environmental issues which are represented.
1. The City of Seattle gets its municipal water supply from the Tolt and Cedar Rivers, in the Cascades. It is a relatively fixed amount of water, although subject to changes in snowpack and precipitation. We did however, have abundant supplies and low rates until a few decades ago. Then everyone started moving here. To keep demand from outstripping supply, we started increasing the cost of water to encourage everyone to conserve more. As long as growth continues, we will continue to increase rates at about 5% a year, or doubling every twenty years. This has proven effective, as per-capita water use has declined dramatically over the last several decades, and we remain within the limits of our resources. Faced with diminishing water supplies on both a national and global scale, this would seem a practical model for encouraging prudent consumption. Discuss the obstacles to implementing such a system on a national basis.
2. Petrochemical companies are generally not welcome in Washington State. We do have an oil refinery in Anacortes that serves the northwest, but we don't have chemical plants and the other attendant industries. Activists recently derailed plans for a huge methanol plant on the Tacoma waterfront, as one example among many. We are a well-educated and well-employed state with only a mildly corrupted system of governance, a combination which works poorly for the petroleum and chemical industries. Enter Louisiana. Among the least-educated and poorest states in the country, with a government many have characterized as the most corrupt in the nation, it is fertile ground for those interests. For business, this is the value of having letting states set their own standards, rather than a "one-size fits all" national policy. The same holds for letting nations set their own standards, rather than a "one-size fits all" global policy. Both circumstances create the "exploitable differences" which capitalism thrives on.
Consider this observation with respect to the following recent article, which points out that the environmental impacts of our modern lifestyles are not evenly distributed. How does this affect our social awareness of these impacts, our political attention to them, and a proper accounting for the true costs involved?