When considering resources, the environment presents a particular challenge. In this case, the increasing consumption is of particular importance. The use of environmentally friendly new technologies is often cited in response to this development.
On the one hand, the older, less environmentally friendly technology ties up financial resources. At the end of its operational life, the outdated technology requires only a small amount of maintenance investment to make the transition to the new technology, and this yields a good profit. At the same time, the introduction of new technologies requires large amounts of financial resources. This suggests that investors are not switching from old, high-yield technologies to new ones as quickly as environmental degradation may require. Thus, it seems logical that public funds are used at the expense of the general public, that they claim the financial market and limit the financial commitment for the purpose of environmental protection.
Initially, it seems obvious that the costs of preventing and reducing environmental pollution and consumption through the use of new and effective technologies should be borne by the polluters. For various reasons, the costs of preventing and remedying environmental damage often cannot be easily assigned to the polluters. The assignment problem exists because:
- environmental pollution occurs across borders
- in the past, rich countries paid poor countries only small fees for raw materials and work. The poor countries were thus only able to consume a small amount per person, use only small quantities of resources and produce only a small amount of additive environmental pollution, while rich countries were already consuming a large share of the available environment per person. It would be logical for poor countries to claim the right to consume in a compensatory way, while rich countries have to prevent environmental pollution and possibly to restore it.
In this context, it could be possible for poor countries to join forces to realize increasingly extensive markets at low, similar cost levels. This would also lead to an increasing use of resources and more cross-border environmental pollution. The amount of resources available to rich countries would then decline, and scarcity would cause their prices to rise. The poor countries would no longer be available to provide raw materials and cheap labour for the rich countries as a matter of course.
The enforcement of the interests of the rich countries to secure their resource supply could then come into conflict with the military potential of non-rich countries, which participate in a bloc with rather poor countries in common markets at a low cost level.
This would allow new market blocks to develop in peaceful coexistence, which might even address the cross-border safeguarding of resources with regard to the environment, because the preservation of the cross-border environment obviously does not submit to a market that acts as if by itself, nor to a totalitarian leadership. But there is also a logic according to which the competition for resources traditionally takes place militarily.