How companies acquire the right to pollute: meeting with Flore Berlingen

It’s like child’s play. Every polluter has to pay for the pollution it generates. Behind this economic incentive hides a founding principle of environmental law: the polluter pays model, or the hope of seeing companies change their behavior in favor of more virtuous alternatives, because they are less expensive. A system that Flore Berlingen denounces in a new ferocious essay, License to hurt. The former director of Zero Waste France is categorical: not only this model does not keep its promises, but also allows those with the means to afford the right to pollute. Counter-current interview.

To miss. Why did you call your book Permis de Nuire?

Flora Berlingen. The “polluter pays” principle implies that you can go out thanks to a monetary exchange, for example by paying a dissuasive tax or by financing territorial development projects to “compensate” your damage to the environment … you pay, we are in order . This is a legislative turning point: it is not the same thing to believe that pollution is something for which one can be condemned as to be able to propose a financial response to be exempt from all responsibility: there is a transactional principle that replaces the principle of responsibility civil or criminal and at the same time normalizes pollution.

If at first glance the “polluter pays” principle seems to be common sense, it demonstrates that its application is not always taken for granted …

For certain types of pollution, which are played out in the very long term, we can see the damage decades later, without being able to find the polluter or make him pay for it. Likewise, it is difficult to find the person responsible if multiple actors are involved.

Let’s take road pollution: who should pay? The driver who decided to take his car? The car manufacturer? The fuel manufacturer?

Once you have identified the polluter, you need to assess the amount owed. The “polluter pays” principle necessarily involves an effort to quantify and monetize the environmental impact. Which doesn’t always make sense as some things are priceless.

We therefore end up with a commodification of ecosystems …

When we have punctual and localized pollution, we can quantify the economic damage by looking at how much it costs humans to clean up. But that tells us neither of the damage to ecosystems nor of the overall long-term impacts. This monetization reaches its peak in the case of land development projects where the promoter tries to estimate how much it costs to destroy such an environment or species, for example by assigning an arbitrary price to wild salmon.

It is not because we have recovered millions of euros in compensation for the destruction of a species that this will bring it back.

We market things that we are unable to produce or recreate ourselves.

Should ecological compensation be abolished?

We tend to forget that compensation must be integrated in a sequence: avoid, reduce, compensate.

Before compensating, you must first avoid environmental damage at all costs and, if this is not possible, reduce it as much as possible.

But when we look at some large infrastructure or land development projects, we can clearly see that they are skipping stages. The criteria for effective compensation, then, are numerous: it is necessary to act on an equivalent type of environment, geographically close, to have a net gain in biodiversity… If we respect all these principles to the letter, it is boring. So many intermediaries create markets to “simplify” things. This is what I call compensation for supply: we initiate restoration operations, without acting at the origin of the problem, and then sell turnkey credits to companies that continue to pollute.

Take Voluntary Plastic Compensation Markets: An intermediary funds plastic collection operations on the beaches. It does not act at the source of the problem, because it does not contribute to reducing the production of plastic. However, it sells credits to companies so they can continue releasing as much waste into the environment as ever. All while claiming to be “plastic neutral”.

Companies buy themselves the chance to pollute without changing their practices.

This shows that this system is failing and that we need to get rid of it!

In his view, the polluter pays principle is undemocratic. How come ?

Yes, because the financial calculation replaces the resolution. Regulation by the market and polluters themselves of these environmental impacts is not the right solution.

In a context where choices will have to be made, is it normal that those who initiate these projects and those who have the means to pay are the only ones able to decide? Isn’t it rather for society as a whole to define its priorities?

I think it is essential to put these social choices back at the center of the debate, rather than relying on planners, industrialists and businesses. Let’s ask ourselves the real questions: is such a project essential for society in a context of environmental emergency in which we have to reduce certain consumption?

Cover photo: © Flore Berlingen