10 Ways the Free Market Protects the Environment
Air pollution can also be dealt with by markets. Many remember the constant brown air in the Los Angeles basin, now greatly improved, even out in East County (Pomona, Ontario, Claremont) where the brown used to collect against the surrounding mountain foothills and eye irritation was a constant. To be sure, government regulation played a role, but markets always work within some regulatory environment, and all of the automobile manufacturers nationwide responded to both the regulation and to the market demand for cleaner air with dramatically more efficient and cleaner cars and trucks. Today, despite a dramatic increase in the number of cars since, say, 1965, the air is mostly clear. The right to clean air had acquired a property value. In the process, markets were also responding to demands for greater fuel efficiency prompted by rising gasoline prices, thus easing the pressure on oil and gas resources as well as the environment.
