services generates at least some pollution. In choosing how much
pollution to allow, society must recognize the tradeoff between devoting
resources toward pollution abatement and other valuable things.
Economic analysis has a good deal to say about how a society might
minimize the cost of any degree of pollution abatement. By taking the
moral attitude that pollution is wrong and pollution permits should not
be allowed, the result is that less pollution is abated for any given amount
of society’s scarce resources that are allocated toward this goal.
