\"Free enterprise is supposedly incompatible with environmental preservation, so that government regulation is required. … But if the profit motive is the primary cause of pollution, one would not expect to find much pollution in socialist countries, such as the former Soviet Union, China, and in the former Communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe.\"

Why would one expect to find less pollution in a socialist country? Who argues that the profit motive alone is the primary cause of pollution? If somebody does, it\’s unnecessary- there are plenty of other suspects as to the primary cause. If you do away with that unnecessary premise, it follows that there is nothing incompatible with the fact that terrible pollution occurred in socialist countries as well as capitalist ones.

You say socialism causes pollution, however the countries you have given us were all authoritarian communist countries. There are currently a number of Western European countries that this site has referred to as \’socialist\’ before- why not account for their pollution as well? Those \’socialist\’ countries are outperforming the US in terms of environmental performance http://epi.yale.edu/CountryScores.

The causes of the great pollution in the communist countries you mentioned are usually linked to their rapid industrialization, attempting to catch up with the standard of living in capitalist countries, and the lack of democracy in those countries. I would argue that a republican political system with democratic checks did more for the US, and would have done more for the USSR, to stop pollution than the economic systems did.

Indeed private property rights and liability for infringing on those rights can create vested interests in keeping things nice and neat- as far as those interests go. However, when dealing with public goods it\’s usually not so. A river where a company exercises the rule of capture will affect the town that relies on that water downstream. Other industries will have negative externalities that will change the water. You might say we have effective liability laws to prohibit such outcomes– but businesses have found out that strong liability laws are regulation by another name, and businesses have lobbied for laws that make it more difficult to make a company liable- for instance, in Texas, there is no such thing as a class action, effectively. The notion that these liability laws are strong enough to make companies \"responsible for their actions\" is pretty much a joke- but with liability, what do we hold them liable for? For the breach of some standard of care. Who sets that standard? When the average citizen cannot reasonably be expected to have in depth knowledge of the effects of pollutants, it only makes sense to have some agency or other company do the analysis. I think this might be hard to make profitable- and even if you were to make it so, to prevent improper incentives to make deals with the polluters, there would still need to be some regulation. But- until some genius figures out how to do it for a profit and with greater efficiency- I\’d as soon trust the government to do it- I really don\’t believe anyone else will. This is all to say I don\’t understand your championing liability but railing against the EPA as going toward socialism- both are state sponsored regulation- the court system just happens to be more inefficient and ineffective than good policing.

The notion that the vast pollution of the Earth that this article all too well demonstrates cannot be attributed to the \’socialism\’ or capitalism of a country necessarily. \"Regulation\" in the form of liability or more straight forward government policing could change the outcome in either form of economy.