Question 3
Would you favor banning the use of tall smokestacks as a way to promote greater emphasis on preventing acid deposition and other forms of air pollution? Explain. If your answer is yes, would you still favor this action if it raised your electricity bill by 10%? How about 20% or 50%?
I would favor the banning of the use of tall smokestacks as a way to prevent acid deposition and other forms of air pollution. A tall smokestack may reduce local concentrations of pollution but cannot reduce total emissions, which travel elsewhere downwind, hurting air quality. This is because the use of tall smokestacks by the coal power plants to release air pollutants like nitrogen oxides and Sulphur oxides into the air to decrease the impact on the local community and disperse pollution is no guarantee of reducing the air pollution. While the use of tall smokestacks is aimed to reduce pollution, at higher altitudes, the wind currents are faster, thus causing pollution to travel other states or areas in miles (Myers & Spoolman, 2013). Tall smokestacks increase the chances of interstate transport of air pollution. Smokestacks should be banned because they act as a point source of pollution through emission of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Whereas tall smokestacks reduce the impact of pollutants on the local area, it spreads the pollution over a large area.
If this action of banning it raises the electricity bill by 10 %, I will still favor this action because the issue of corporate social responsibility is paramount to protect the climate. The adverse effects caused by pollution due to air pollution and acid deposition are serious matters that need to be looked into, and it overrides other factors. If the electricity bill increases to 20 or 50 percent due to the banning action of tall smokestacks, other factors will be required to be considered, which affects the costs of production. This is because the amount of electricity is too high for the coal power plant transferred into the consumers. The installation of pollution control equipment is a costly affair; hence the cost-benefit analysis will be carried out to ascertain if the action to ban tall smokestacks will be worth the increased electricity bill.
Reference
Myers, N., & Spoolman, S. (2013). Environmental Issues and Solutions: A Modular Approach. Cengage Learning.