But nowadays private interests can cross international borders with ease, while governments cannot.

Which means large corporations get to influence policies, even without any lobbying. "Dear senator, what do you mean those environmental protection regulations apply to us? The regulations of the neighbour country $x, that also invited us to build our 10 000 jobs worth plant on their soil, are nowhere near as onerous. We might need to take them up on their offer. Perhaps at least you can cut us a tax break?"

"Well, dear corporation, if you want to sell your products to our citizens, you have to play by our rules. We'll let you know that your direct competitor already agreed to these rules yesterday."

"I'm sorry Senator, you must be confused. Our products meet the health&safety standards prescribed by yours as well as international regulations in this region. You cannot, legally, stop stores from reselling our products, nor you can prevent customers from ordering them on-line. Meanwhile, if you're satisfied with the smaller plant of 2000 jobs of our competitor, we'll happily set up shop at your neighbour's.

It was nice dealing with you. I hope you don't mind if I mention your name at the press conference we'll call soon to announce signing of the deal for our new plant with your neighbour."

"We have and will use our authority to prevent the sale or re-sale of products that do not conform to the rule of law. Please be so kind to mention my name at your press conference, so that my citizens know their government stands up for their rights."

I know that the above response might seem like a pipe-dream to some, but let me assure you that there are governments and government officials that do stand up for the rule of law, and that are not easily bought by the highest bidder.

Yeah, but what I meant by my response is that, in this hypothetical scenario, the products themselves are fine. Nice, clean, safe, recyclable, whatnot. It's the manufacturing process that's polluting. You can't ban a product from being sold in your country on the grounds that manufacturing it in another country is an ecological disaster. Meanwhile, all those jobs are highly desirable (not just for your personal benefit as a politician, but also for the benefit of your constituents and your nation's economy). So there's an incentive to relax the environmental protection rules a little bit. A corporation can use this to play countries off each other - if you stand fast by your existing rules, and your neighbour does not, all the plants and all the jobs and all the economic boost will go to your neighbour, making your country weaker on the international scene.

There's no bribing involved in this scenario. Just plain market competition at nation-state level.

Well, it depends on the size of the country, does it? And on the mindset of the population.

If the EU tells you you can't produce anywhere in the EU because of how dirty your factory is, you can still produce it in the US or Russia and then ship it to the EU. However, your supply lines have just gotten more complicated, expensive, and error prone (because of distance) - so that's one part of the equation that a company has to take into consideration as well.

On top of that, I'm fairly sure there are quite a few Europeans who will applaud politicians who stand up against polluting or otherwise unethical companies, and who look down on (and not vote for) politicians who do shady deals with polluting companies.

So, as always - it's not so simple, and there's more than one dynamic at play.

> You can't ban a product from being sold in your country on the grounds that manufacturing it in another country is an ecological disaster.

Why not? Constituents like it because it brings back the jobs that left because moving them out allowed companies to avoid environmental regulations, which they can now not avoid either way if they want to sell in your country and so might as well bring the jobs back.

> Constituents like it because it brings back the jobs that left

If it succeeds.

I guess you could do that; a sovereign state can try whatever they like. But has that ever actually happened? I can't think of any case where a country banned import of a product on the grounds that its manufacturing isn't up to environmental standards, even though the manufacturing happens in a different sovereign nation, and is compliant with that other nation's standards. I imagine trying to do that would quickly escalate the issue from business to international politics.

There are already rules about things like labor standards of where the product was made. Like if a company uses slaves to manufacture a product, the purchasing company doesn't just through up their hands and say "What can we do? It is not our labor standards they have to comply with." No reason we couldn't add environmental standards to the list.

Yup, the rationale inside knows that this is difficult problem to tackle. I let the hearth speak for small moment.

It could have been non-polluting, but instead of redesigning, it's easier now to get nations to compete against each other for the location of that plant - and as part of that competition, relax the environmental protections. The "freedom of movement" for corporations (freedom of movement of capital?) has plenty of benefits, but this is one of the negative side effects.

My solution is for all governments to take responsibility, tax pollution and for consumers to understand the environmental costs of products, possibly by forcing disclosure.

I don't understand what your solution is. Ban importing goods? Tax imported goods based on factory pollution and standards?

Knowing the solution is the easy part. The hard part is how to get there, and how to keep the solution working.

"All governments taking responsibility simultaneously" is not something that ever happens. And even if it did, in a moment of selfless reflection of all global leaders, weaker economies will still have a powerful incentive to relax the standards to compete better with stronger economies. I don't have a solution, I'm just saying how things are. Restricting the ability of multinationals to play countries against each other would help in this matter, but it would probably gum up the economy too hard to be worth the attempt (not to mention, it would have to be another thing most governments would have to agree on simultaneously, otherwise the ones to attempt it immediately lose).

The overall point is: it is a tragedy of the commons, just not a local one - an international one. The solution to tragedy of the commons is to have a higher authority unilaterally force participants to limit their use of the commons. But we don't have any higher authority above nation states, so we're ill-equipped to solve tragedies of the commons at international level.

Yes, What is difference between ie. CO2 and other thrash we already producing (as society). So far we didn't accepted that we need 'pay' or handle CO2 as rubbish (while PPM constantly growing). But take your dog poo in park or pay fine (Plastic anyone?). Again, What is difference ?

Even assuming they are capable of that (I am doubtful), reaching consensus on the idea seems quite a bit of a long shot. Something likely needs to be done though, somehow.