This was an audience question about how strict libertarians would address the issue of climate change. I gave some thoughts, but not being a libertarian myself, I'd love to hear from the many libertarians on Steemit...
The sun is the source of energy, yes. The changes of the sun are having more and more of a cooling effect as it gets weaker and weaker, this is correct.
It is also correct that if you run a 500W heater it will get hotter in a small well isolated room than in a similarily sized tent with holes all over (like a yurt). In this case, climate gases have the impact of isolation.
The same way you deal with any other issue, by taking responsibility for your own actions, and not contributing to the things you don't want to see.
Stop eating meat (methane causes "warming" far more than carbon does)
Stop funding the war machine (#1 polluter on the planet)
Stop buying things shipped from around the world
Stop driving
Stop using electricity from fossil fuels
Stop buying bottled water
etc etc.
That said, the whole "climate change" issue has been totally mis-directed to suit the eugenics agenda. Carbon is not the problem (plants require large amounts of carbon in the air to survive); it has simply been made to appear that it is, because then humans are automatically a problem (hence it's okay to get rid of most of the population [per this talk by Bill Gates])
I do agree on a lot of your points but. Whats going on in Antartica is the game changer. Yes, fossil fuel is a problem. But what do you with a volcano? What does a volcano put out? Just one? How about 110 volcanos? The world is changing. It a living organism. It cleans itself. One day it will clean us off. This global warming crap is all about MONEY. The people of the world have screwed the pouch. I cant say its gone to far. As a people, we do need to get our shit together.We all pollute. Everyone of us have to do there part.It's way to easy to pon it off to someone else.
while i agree to an extent with some of what you said, I will question your summation about climate change. There was a time before Al Gore and Bill Gates and before it became politically expedient to jump on the climate change bandwagon, a time where everyone in europe was on board and the US balked because climate change would hurt business. A time where scientists believed in climate change based on the science. Not because anyone pressured them to. The fact is scientists brought it to the attention of the general public so that politicians were forced to act, but being politicians they needed to find a way to make money out of it, to win votes and barter with business.
Scientists predicted thirty years ago what is happening today with pretty stunning accuracy, except no one would listen. Yeah so maybe there are different reasons than what they originally thought. But the truth is that polar ice caps are melting. The seas are rising, forest fires are increasing, species are going extinct. But heaven forbid we try to control any industry that pollutes and steals natural resources from the public domain for a pittance of the value.
Let's just put it all on the consumer for wanting things that we are brought up believing we need to have. Oh and let's not give the average guy enough education to understand this or time to research the facts between the false news because they are too busy working to think past paying the next bill. The nightmare misdirect isnt climate change. It's greedy politicians and business men who want to force people into believing that climate change is a big lie so that we will go on blindly following the bouncing ball like a bunch of eejits.
Yes we need to change our patterns and thought processes. Yes we need to put a real value on natural resources and reject government authority. But let big business off the hook because "it's all a hoax"? Absolutely not. If I need to take responsibility, so do they. They've gotten a free lunch for way too long.
Quite the opposite. If you are giving all of your time/energy/money/focus to the things you support and want to see, while withdrawing your time/energy/money/focus from the things you do not support, you are truly living your own life.
I have no idea myself either. I would like to be acquainted too of how libertarians would tackle this climate change issue ?? I heard about an EU Blockchain tracking the emissions and so ... but does this relate to libertarianism?
The entire reason we have any pollution at all on this planet is the same reason we have poverty, war, and any other atrocity you can think of—which is: power and corruption.
We shouldn’t be guilting people for chugging their plastic water bottles while flying down the freeway in the fast lane. They’re just trying to enjoy their time here. Instead, spread truth. Knock down worldviews by going after the premise itself, and get people talking about REAL things—not power and money grabs.
Yes, pollution can be regarded as an initiation of aggression similar to theft. (It's not a problem with libertarianism that state court systems -- and for that matter, state licensing and regulating -- have allowed all this stuff to happen and failed to regard it as a problem.)
You're tilting at windmills over the things you think libertarians think, when the system that's currently in place has proven itself entirely ineffective at policing climate.
@kennyskitchen basically laid it out, but of course taking responsibility for yourself isn't the answer you were looking for. What you want is an excuse to micro-manage other people under the guise of fixing a problem, whether or not you're effective at fixing it.
Libertarianism won't give you that, but it does give you every single possible way to help solve it p2p and peacefully.
Going forward, in a truly decentralized world, you'll probably have reputation based (court-like) systems that incorporate a person's footprint, just like you need a way to track who is a rapist, who owes money on bills, etc., and this would be a practical incentive for people to treat the planet well.
Or more inside the box, libertarianism at least doesn't actively create problems, like subsidies to the meat and dairy industry or a transportation system that begs for everyone to pollute whenever they go somewhere. Or global warfare for that matter.
Without those things, and without a court system that wouldn't dare hurt the interests of their corporate pals, I'm not sure the problem would really even be a thing.
I think this is an underpinning of some of the potential pitfalls on being STRICTLY libertarian.
If you "defang" government to the point that it cannot encroach on individual liberty, or state liberty, it has been declawed to the point that it can't effectively do anything.
For instance, in the beginning of the country, before the constitution, the government couldn't force states to pay taxes, for instance, to maintain the military, which is something that everyone benefited from. We took that to just about the brink, with the articles of confederation, before we finally hammered down, a broader more powerful federal government out of necessity.
I'm not sure the strong centralized US military went on to run up a good track record for your point here :)
But I actually see it as the opposite. When you have "libertarianish" aspects of a centralized state, it seems possibly the worst of both worlds. Like businesses who are free to go after profit, but then a centralized court system who allows them to pollute.
Whereas if/when there is an absence of government, you'd also have a different licensing and regulating mechanism, which (I would argue) would actually keep pollution and other bad behavior in check.
I wasn't trying to say what it all became is the greatest and requires no thought about the matter, I was trying to say we had a really libertarian society once, during our countries infancy, and we ended it for very specific reasons.
Libertarianism seems like a middle age man thinking back on his "glory days" and forgetting about how much he hated it when he was living through it..
Government can change and act in ways that don't necessarily reflect what the people want. And since the government is steered most by the people inside it (or well connected to it), there's generally a pressure towards larger government. So whether "we" decided to move in that direction is I think unclear.
And even if we did, it doesn't mean we were right.
Most people who think about libertarianism I think are usually thinking about principles and the best way forward, I don't think that many are basing it on the past or how things were in early US history.
At least, I know I certainly don't.
I see what you meant tho and appreciate your clarification.
The biggest thing you could do on the individual level is to reduce, or as I would advocate for, eliminate your support for animal agriculture. The fossil fuel industry is on the way out as renewable energy shows up. What needs to change is the amount of methane production and deforestation caused by farm animals.
You could ask the same question of peace keeping or any other sphere of public life where your freedoms are superseded by the rights of your neighbours. Obviously there would need to be an agreement and enforcement of that agreement, which I would call government. The question to libertarians is, how do you ensure that this authority's power comes from the bottom up, rather than the top down?
This is a very interesting point and it's definitely one on which the libertarian side of the argument is weak. The only way libertarianism would work here is if everyone was more incentivised by reducing climate change than they were by lowering prices, and in the real world unfortunately I think people would choose to pay less for things over protecting the environment
I’m very interested in hearing the answers. Many things about libertarianism appeal to me in some ways, but I don’t see how we could get rid of all regulations and not expect people to just do whatever is cheapest, despite its effect on the planet.
I would almost think that knowingly damaging the earth would not qualify as doing no harm.
I identify as libertarian myself, although I'm sure most of them would disagree with me on that.
My answer is: as little government as is necessary. But no less than is needed. If fascism is necessary, then Fascism is the right size of government. If anarchy is allowed, then anarchy.
Nice post. Climate change is now a big issue in south Asian countries. For this many people died in recent years. So i think everyone should raised their voice about climate change.
how could we be in a libertarians world with 7 billion people ?
I think that climate change concerns all of us and especially our children being on one political party ( and being a liberarian will not change the facts either) or another does not change the fact that we are too late on many points , if you look into the GIEC report whats waits for us is dealing with all the damage we have already made .
All this must go through education of the future generations .
There is no place for politics in logic and science: just fatcs and proposing solutions .
Most libertarians don't simply believe in silly things governments tell people. They do their own research on topics like 'climate change' and realize how dumb people sound when they feed on propaganda.
It happens, it always happened and the recent Climate development is in no way rapid. It does not mean that we should not care about, but all this alarming bs is bs.
Not sure how you expect such a vague subject to be addressed in the comments section. All I have to say is that a lot of environmental degradation could be solved by protecting land/property rights. Like instead of giving pipeline companies eminent domain power to force themselves onto unwilling landowners, you could respect the landowners' title and liberals would have one less thing to bitch about. Protecting the land rights of indigenous tribes in places such as West Africa and the Amazon rain forest, instead of evicting them at gun point to set up so called protected areas, would get you closer to 'lower carbon emission' than allowing a criminal government to look after it. Conservation is best done by those who have a vested interest in their environment i.e. those who make a living off the land. That's true of the Baka in the Congo as well as family farms/ranches here in the U.S.
Ok, I wouldn't consider myself a libertarian but on the political compass I usually land far down in the bottom-left-quadrant labeled as "left-libertarian" but I think one of the best ways to at least reduce climate change is to decentralize and self-organize the production of goods instead of leaving it to giant mass-producers who usually at least in the food-industry produce more than is needed to satisfy the demand meaning tons of food are usually thrown away and a lot of energy is wasted.
Another advantage of a decentralized production would be the reduction of the need for global logistics, currently one of the biggest CO2-polluters on the planet.
Additionaly it could also be useful to give up the patent-system and other information-monopolization-mechanisms that enable big corporations, etc. to keep competitors away from the market who may otherwise be able to create even better products than the information-monopolist. Instead I would even say it would be useful to make all information freely available for everyone enabling us to self-organize and decentralize the production of goods and to freely improve inventions.
Another more realistic and easier implementable but less efficient way could be the deregulation of some markets inside the classical political system. One example for a market in the EU stifled by too much regulation is the GMO-market.
While there are basically no regulations for organic and conventionally bred foods there are lots of regulations for GMOs that basically only enable big corporations like Monsanto, etc. to research and sell GMOs while keeping away small biotech-startups and non-profit DIY-bio-initiatives. More deregulation of the GMO-market in the EU would probably drive innovation f.e. maybe towards trees that could also grow in drier regions of the world allowing us to replant forests and bind more CO2 in them potentially halting or even decreasing climate change.
Although I think this deregulation-way inside this system could be at least a bit helpful I still think the best ways would be the decentralization of production and the complete liberation of information so that people are able to organize themselves to solve the problem of climate change and many other problems instead of letting authoritarian structures like nation-states and big corporations ruin everything with their stifling over-regulation and unsustainable mass-production.
I don't know what business is doing, but I know what I can do to minimize my own impact. I eat a plant based diet, recycle, compost, grow plants and share my opinions and beliefs with other who want to have the conversation. Very important topic.
The really unworkable thing about libertarianism is that they always talk about the threat of physical force like it's the end all be all, when it's the least of forces to be hated.
Economic force is overwhelmingly the most powerful force, but it gets a pass from them on almost every issue. As Ghandi said 'economic violence is the worst form of violence'.
If you take the cities water supply with your army it's wrong, but if you buy it with your bank it's okay? The poor people who can't afford your fee to drink are going to starve in both cases; what's worse: in the latter case people will BLAME the thirsty for their own death.
We are taught to worship the strong of wallet in the same way we used to worship the strong of arm.
One could certainly argue that pollution violates the NAP libertarians love to cite. How would one deal with that? I would say by relaxing the restrictions around nuclear energy. Its expensive to deal with the waste - and thats only due to it being illegal for the "waste" to be used as a ressource instead and thus THANKS to nuclear energy in effect reducing radiation from the uranium which occours naturaly (okay, it does that anyways, but the storage is still a problem. If you were allowed however to use that in a breeding reactor that problem would disappear).
There is evidence of climate changes on Venus and Mars too.
So, the Sun is a likely cause.
The sun is the source of energy, yes. The changes of the sun are having more and more of a cooling effect as it gets weaker and weaker, this is correct.
It is also correct that if you run a 500W heater it will get hotter in a small well isolated room than in a similarily sized tent with holes all over (like a yurt). In this case, climate gases have the impact of isolation.
The same way you deal with any other issue, by taking responsibility for your own actions, and not contributing to the things you don't want to see.
That said, the whole "climate change" issue has been totally mis-directed to suit the eugenics agenda. Carbon is not the problem (plants require large amounts of carbon in the air to survive); it has simply been made to appear that it is, because then humans are automatically a problem (hence it's okay to get rid of most of the population [per this talk by Bill Gates])
Al Gore looks to make loads of $$ through carbon taxes and anti-carbon hype
Here are a couple great pieces by @corbettreport (the best investigative journalist around) breaking down this fraudulent play for global control:
I do agree on a lot of your points but. Whats going on in Antartica is the game changer. Yes, fossil fuel is a problem. But what do you with a volcano? What does a volcano put out? Just one? How about 110 volcanos? The world is changing. It a living organism. It cleans itself. One day it will clean us off. This global warming crap is all about MONEY. The people of the world have screwed the pouch. I cant say its gone to far. As a people, we do need to get our shit together.We all pollute. Everyone of us have to do there part.It's way to easy to pon it off to someone else.
while i agree to an extent with some of what you said, I will question your summation about climate change. There was a time before Al Gore and Bill Gates and before it became politically expedient to jump on the climate change bandwagon, a time where everyone in europe was on board and the US balked because climate change would hurt business. A time where scientists believed in climate change based on the science. Not because anyone pressured them to. The fact is scientists brought it to the attention of the general public so that politicians were forced to act, but being politicians they needed to find a way to make money out of it, to win votes and barter with business.
Scientists predicted thirty years ago what is happening today with pretty stunning accuracy, except no one would listen. Yeah so maybe there are different reasons than what they originally thought. But the truth is that polar ice caps are melting. The seas are rising, forest fires are increasing, species are going extinct. But heaven forbid we try to control any industry that pollutes and steals natural resources from the public domain for a pittance of the value.
Let's just put it all on the consumer for wanting things that we are brought up believing we need to have. Oh and let's not give the average guy enough education to understand this or time to research the facts between the false news because they are too busy working to think past paying the next bill. The nightmare misdirect isnt climate change. It's greedy politicians and business men who want to force people into believing that climate change is a big lie so that we will go on blindly following the bouncing ball like a bunch of eejits.
Yes we need to change our patterns and thought processes. Yes we need to put a real value on natural resources and reject government authority. But let big business off the hook because "it's all a hoax"? Absolutely not. If I need to take responsibility, so do they. They've gotten a free lunch for way too long.
you might end up not really living your own life fully
Quite the opposite. If you are giving all of your time/energy/money/focus to the things you support and want to see, while withdrawing your time/energy/money/focus from the things you do not support, you are truly living your own life.
Quite a point there realy
Eating meat = climate change
yup!!
and eating meat while pretending to care about the climate and trying to micro manage other people into respecting the climate = pure nutiness
I have no idea myself either. I would like to be acquainted too of how libertarians would tackle this climate change issue ?? I heard about an EU Blockchain tracking the emissions and so ... but does this relate to libertarianism?
i just do my best and sip down
In the absence of government tyranny, we’d have free energy:
https://www.wanttoknow.info/freeenergy
The entire reason we have any pollution at all on this planet is the same reason we have poverty, war, and any other atrocity you can think of—which is: power and corruption.
We shouldn’t be guilting people for chugging their plastic water bottles while flying down the freeway in the fast lane. They’re just trying to enjoy their time here. Instead, spread truth. Knock down worldviews by going after the premise itself, and get people talking about REAL things—not power and money grabs.
Ding ding ding!!
So very true, thanks for pointing at this part of the issue
Yes, pollution can be regarded as an initiation of aggression similar to theft. (It's not a problem with libertarianism that state court systems -- and for that matter, state licensing and regulating -- have allowed all this stuff to happen and failed to regard it as a problem.)
You're tilting at windmills over the things you think libertarians think, when the system that's currently in place has proven itself entirely ineffective at policing climate.
@kennyskitchen basically laid it out, but of course taking responsibility for yourself isn't the answer you were looking for. What you want is an excuse to micro-manage other people under the guise of fixing a problem, whether or not you're effective at fixing it.
Libertarianism won't give you that, but it does give you every single possible way to help solve it p2p and peacefully.
Going forward, in a truly decentralized world, you'll probably have reputation based (court-like) systems that incorporate a person's footprint, just like you need a way to track who is a rapist, who owes money on bills, etc., and this would be a practical incentive for people to treat the planet well.
Or more inside the box, libertarianism at least doesn't actively create problems, like subsidies to the meat and dairy industry or a transportation system that begs for everyone to pollute whenever they go somewhere. Or global warfare for that matter.
Without those things, and without a court system that wouldn't dare hurt the interests of their corporate pals, I'm not sure the problem would really even be a thing.
(But blame peaceful cooperation.. ya.. ::rolls eyes::)
I think this is an underpinning of some of the potential pitfalls on being STRICTLY libertarian.
If you "defang" government to the point that it cannot encroach on individual liberty, or state liberty, it has been declawed to the point that it can't effectively do anything.
For instance, in the beginning of the country, before the constitution, the government couldn't force states to pay taxes, for instance, to maintain the military, which is something that everyone benefited from. We took that to just about the brink, with the articles of confederation, before we finally hammered down, a broader more powerful federal government out of necessity.
I'm not sure the strong centralized US military went on to run up a good track record for your point here :)
But I actually see it as the opposite. When you have "libertarianish" aspects of a centralized state, it seems possibly the worst of both worlds. Like businesses who are free to go after profit, but then a centralized court system who allows them to pollute.
Whereas if/when there is an absence of government, you'd also have a different licensing and regulating mechanism, which (I would argue) would actually keep pollution and other bad behavior in check.
I wasn't trying to say what it all became is the greatest and requires no thought about the matter, I was trying to say we had a really libertarian society once, during our countries infancy, and we ended it for very specific reasons.
Libertarianism seems like a middle age man thinking back on his "glory days" and forgetting about how much he hated it when he was living through it..
I see..
Government can change and act in ways that don't necessarily reflect what the people want. And since the government is steered most by the people inside it (or well connected to it), there's generally a pressure towards larger government. So whether "we" decided to move in that direction is I think unclear.
And even if we did, it doesn't mean we were right.
Most people who think about libertarianism I think are usually thinking about principles and the best way forward, I don't think that many are basing it on the past or how things were in early US history.
At least, I know I certainly don't.
I see what you meant tho and appreciate your clarification.
The biggest thing you could do on the individual level is to reduce, or as I would advocate for, eliminate your support for animal agriculture. The fossil fuel industry is on the way out as renewable energy shows up. What needs to change is the amount of methane production and deforestation caused by farm animals.
You could ask the same question of peace keeping or any other sphere of public life where your freedoms are superseded by the rights of your neighbours. Obviously there would need to be an agreement and enforcement of that agreement, which I would call government. The question to libertarians is, how do you ensure that this authority's power comes from the bottom up, rather than the top down?
"The question to libertarians is, how do you ensure that this authority's power comes from the bottom up, rather than the top down?"
Being libertarian means basically disbelieving in such a possibility... They're more concerned with how do they keep kids off their lawn.
just Live !
Muh free market fairy will take care of it!
More coal power? lol If volcanoes can cause an ice age it seems like coal would cause cooling?
wow...you create a great information....i think its useful to us....thanks for shear it....best of luck brother...
Nice post
Nice post.I respect you very much because you contribute to steemit.I will do activities like you.I would like to extend the steemit.
Awesome question. Climate change is a global phenomenon requiring the concerted efforts of all.
This is a very interesting point and it's definitely one on which the libertarian side of the argument is weak. The only way libertarianism would work here is if everyone was more incentivised by reducing climate change than they were by lowering prices, and in the real world unfortunately I think people would choose to pay less for things over protecting the environment
BUT MUH AYN RAND SAID IT AINT SO.
Who really knows more about self made Americanism than a Tsarist Russian?
I’m very interested in hearing the answers. Many things about libertarianism appeal to me in some ways, but I don’t see how we could get rid of all regulations and not expect people to just do whatever is cheapest, despite its effect on the planet.
I would almost think that knowingly damaging the earth would not qualify as doing no harm.
I identify as libertarian myself, although I'm sure most of them would disagree with me on that.
My answer is: as little government as is necessary. But no less than is needed. If fascism is necessary, then Fascism is the right size of government. If anarchy is allowed, then anarchy.
Nice post. Climate change is now a big issue in south Asian countries. For this many people died in recent years. So i think everyone should raised their voice about climate change.
how could we be in a libertarians world with 7 billion people ?
I think that climate change concerns all of us and especially our children being on one political party ( and being a liberarian will not change the facts either) or another does not change the fact that we are too late on many points , if you look into the GIEC report whats waits for us is dealing with all the damage we have already made .
All this must go through education of the future generations .
There is no place for politics in logic and science: just fatcs and proposing solutions .
.
Most libertarians don't simply believe in silly things governments tell people. They do their own research on topics like 'climate change' and realize how dumb people sound when they feed on propaganda.
Governments aren't the ones telling people about climate change. They're listening to the people who're talking about it though...
If you’re a climate change denier, you may want to hang out elsewhere on Steemit. 😜
I adressed it multiple times.
It happens, it always happened and the recent Climate development is in no way rapid. It does not mean that we should not care about, but all this alarming bs is bs.
https://steemit.com/politics/@thatgermandude/why-climate-change-is-a-hoax-part-ii-the-sea-level-narrative
https://steemit.com/politics/@thatgermandude/my-data-is-better-than-yours-1-climate-change-data-1-the-beginning
https://steemit.com/politics/@thatgermandude/why-climate-change-is-a-hoax-part-ii-the-sea-level-narrative
Not sure how you expect such a vague subject to be addressed in the comments section. All I have to say is that a lot of environmental degradation could be solved by protecting land/property rights. Like instead of giving pipeline companies eminent domain power to force themselves onto unwilling landowners, you could respect the landowners' title and liberals would have one less thing to bitch about. Protecting the land rights of indigenous tribes in places such as West Africa and the Amazon rain forest, instead of evicting them at gun point to set up so called protected areas, would get you closer to 'lower carbon emission' than allowing a criminal government to look after it. Conservation is best done by those who have a vested interest in their environment i.e. those who make a living off the land. That's true of the Baka in the Congo as well as family farms/ranches here in the U.S.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-forests-landrights-conference/indigenous-people-best-custodians-of-threatened-forests-studies-show-idUSKBN16S2QA
.
Ok, I wouldn't consider myself a libertarian but on the political compass I usually land far down in the bottom-left-quadrant labeled as "left-libertarian" but I think one of the best ways to at least reduce climate change is to decentralize and self-organize the production of goods instead of leaving it to giant mass-producers who usually at least in the food-industry produce more than is needed to satisfy the demand meaning tons of food are usually thrown away and a lot of energy is wasted.
Another advantage of a decentralized production would be the reduction of the need for global logistics, currently one of the biggest CO2-polluters on the planet.
Additionaly it could also be useful to give up the patent-system and other information-monopolization-mechanisms that enable big corporations, etc. to keep competitors away from the market who may otherwise be able to create even better products than the information-monopolist. Instead I would even say it would be useful to make all information freely available for everyone enabling us to self-organize and decentralize the production of goods and to freely improve inventions.
Another more realistic and easier implementable but less efficient way could be the deregulation of some markets inside the classical political system. One example for a market in the EU stifled by too much regulation is the GMO-market.
While there are basically no regulations for organic and conventionally bred foods there are lots of regulations for GMOs that basically only enable big corporations like Monsanto, etc. to research and sell GMOs while keeping away small biotech-startups and non-profit DIY-bio-initiatives. More deregulation of the GMO-market in the EU would probably drive innovation f.e. maybe towards trees that could also grow in drier regions of the world allowing us to replant forests and bind more CO2 in them potentially halting or even decreasing climate change.
Although I think this deregulation-way inside this system could be at least a bit helpful I still think the best ways would be the decentralization of production and the complete liberation of information so that people are able to organize themselves to solve the problem of climate change and many other problems instead of letting authoritarian structures like nation-states and big corporations ruin everything with their stifling over-regulation and unsustainable mass-production.
I don't know what business is doing, but I know what I can do to minimize my own impact. I eat a plant based diet, recycle, compost, grow plants and share my opinions and beliefs with other who want to have the conversation. Very important topic.
The really unworkable thing about libertarianism is that they always talk about the threat of physical force like it's the end all be all, when it's the least of forces to be hated.
Economic force is overwhelmingly the most powerful force, but it gets a pass from them on almost every issue. As Ghandi said 'economic violence is the worst form of violence'.
If you take the cities water supply with your army it's wrong, but if you buy it with your bank it's okay? The poor people who can't afford your fee to drink are going to starve in both cases; what's worse: in the latter case people will BLAME the thirsty for their own death.
We are taught to worship the strong of wallet in the same way we used to worship the strong of arm.
One could certainly argue that pollution violates the NAP libertarians love to cite. How would one deal with that? I would say by relaxing the restrictions around nuclear energy. Its expensive to deal with the waste - and thats only due to it being illegal for the "waste" to be used as a ressource instead and thus THANKS to nuclear energy in effect reducing radiation from the uranium which occours naturaly (okay, it does that anyways, but the storage is still a problem. If you were allowed however to use that in a breeding reactor that problem would disappear).