Some industries are damaging to public health. It’s clear the coal power plants in China cause many people to die early, as they do in Europe. The numbers run in the hundred thousands. How to deal with this problem? The ETS system failed in Europe, the Carbon tax has not been put in place and banks keep fuel prices where they need to be for a growing economy.
Maybe this suggetion may work. Let’s say we know that coal fired powerplants are responsible for 16.000 deaths in Holland annually. Rather than deads lets count lost lifespan, in years. Let’s say it cost 16.000 x 5 years on average = 80.000 hours. That’s 80.000 manhours lost every year. Let the coal companies add those as a cost, like invisible employees. That means the industry has to hire 38 others, that make 4.000 a month or so, so pay 152.000 Euro in salaries. It’s clear this is not much of a burden to a billion Euro industry.
It may be a small burden, but for once there is a logical link to lives lost due to activity and the bottom line of an industry. Now the number is in the books, and reducing the health risk of buring coal (for example) translates to the bottom line. This could work for any product, but perhaps we should up the cost or make a handicap formula. Perhaps we should also use an exponential measure so that
- 1 live lost hire 1
- 5 lives lost hire 5
- 10 lives lost hire 20
- 20 lives lost hire 80
- 50 lives lost hire 400
What do you think, would this work? The money should not be spend, or given as subsidies to the competition provided it does not kill anybody. If you are looking at energy it’s clear wind kills less people than coal, and so it will have lower running cost. One can look at numbers counted in deaths per nr. of persons exposed to the technology times the duration of exposure. Just a thought, what do you think?