The utilization of fossil fuel for energy was probably the greatest boon in human history. The benefits have vastly exceeded the costs, and continue to do so. Most of us wouldn't even be able to be alive today if it weren't for it. Recognizing the truth of this doesn't mean ignoring the environmental impact of its use, but the solutions need to begin with saying "well we have this indispensible-however-dirty resource that has propelled our race into the modern age, and that's that, so let's set about moving on to constructive solutions."
Quote:
This is true, or was true, in the large state run economies of Russia and China, but if you mean somewhere else, I'm not really following unless you mean things like the government being responsible when it leases territory to oil companies for drilling or something like that.
Failure to protect things like Bison herds on public lands?
War?
War is obviously a huge one, but your example of government leasing territory to oil companies is more what I am referring to. A lot of crony-capitalistic policy props up obsolescent technology or sanctions environmental harm to take place on public land. The government does a decent job of protecting land that it deems worthy of protections, as in national parks. It does a horrific job of protecting the vast majority of the other land/space that it owns, like roads, the crust, the atmosphere, and bodies of water. It isn't really the governments' faults, its merely the concept of public land.
Someone already brought up the overfishing problem and the Great Pacific garbage Patch. Those problems solely have the concept of international waters to thank. The responsibility to care for the oceans is simply too dispersed for any one government, corporation, or person to be invested enough to take actual responsibility. Basically the oceans have no owner, and resources with no owner are bound to get squandered and abused. Nobody gives a **** about these problems except scientists, pretty much. I don't know a good solution to this, as obviously it would be a practical challenge to sell off discrete plots of fishing waters to the private sector. At the very least, the responsibility and authority to care for the oceans should be divided between the states.