This means cleaning a lake from waste is more easily managed by the municipality than an international organization and handling climate change which has global implication could hardly be effectively dealt with by a municipality.
Related to this is linking responsibility with impact, recognized in the principle of polluter pays. Polluter pays is a good start but as money cannot compensate for the environmental destruction and charging environmental fees to meaningfully internalize what economic models called externalities, aka ecological destruction, would in reality shut the whole economic system down.
Furthermore calculating these externalities, which are only external within the narrow boundaries of economic models, and their cost for humanity is a mirage. For example what is the cost of the human suffering of the effects from climate change?
Instead let us begin redesigning our economy into different spheres where the reach of our responsibility coincides with our impact and an economy where the resources needed for a Cadillac are not competing with resources needed for a plow. Before we are there we can start designing in intrinsic responsibility in the current system.
Let us follow Meadows suggestion
“requiring all towns or companies that emit wastewater into a stream to place their intake pipes downstream from their outflow pipe”
and let those pushing for nuclear plants to have them built in their backyard.
