NewYorker.com

Question: Is it immoral to impose costs upon others?  Elizabeth Kolbert write on this and the proposal of a carbon tax. Her piece instructively begins,

It’s been almost a century since the British economist Arthur Pigou floated the idea that turned his name into an adjective. In “The Economics of Welfare,” published in 1920, Pigou pointed out that private investments often impose costs on other people. Consider this example: A man walks into a bar. He orders several rounds, downs them, and staggers out. The man has got plastered, the bar owner has got the man’s money, and the public will get stuck with the tab for the cops who have to fish the man out of the gutter

Read more at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/12/10/121210taco_talk_kolbert