Ecosystem structure guarantees that environmental costs and benefits never fall on the same people

Evidence

Environmental law is riddled with controversy because there is almost always a mismatch in the allocation of those distributional costs and benefits. Those who receive the benefits will often not be required to absorb the related costs, and vice versa. Indeed, quite the opposite is true. Nature tends to ensure that there will be an inequitable distributional skewing of who benefits and who pays. The reason for this natural inequity is basic to the structure of the ecosystem and the nature of ecological injury. The ecosystem is dominated by shared resources, such as air and water, as well as by a series of interlocking chemical cycles that bind together otherwise seemingly distinct ecological subsystems. The nexus of resources is the fundamental and inevitable source of the spillovers from local causes to far- flung effects that environmental law addresses, and any such spillover is, by its very nature, a distributional conflict. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 132

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pollution control costs can be reframed as immediate health harms clashing with future benefits — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 143; Air, water, and living species all function as common pools spanning space and time — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 133; Disregard of environmental costs is structural to profit-seeking, not individual bad character — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 1052 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Disregard of environmental costs is structural to profit-seeking, not individual bad character #expands (0.85) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 1052
• Spatial-temporal disconnect makes environmental conservation an abstraction not a necessity #expands (0.85) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2529
• Environmental destruction stems from structural imbalance, not individual villainy #corroborates (0.82) — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 617
• Ecosystem services go unaccounted for in the human economy #expands (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 600