Chapter 79 Question ○70

Why is the pollution problem in the Mediterranean region much more serious than that in the Great Yantsu region? Many countries that border the Mediterranean Sea dump raw sewage and many other pollutants into it.In contrast, the Great Salt Lake is largely unpolluted.How to explain this difference? One might argue that the Great Salt Lake is cleaner because the Mormon culture that inhabits the area respects nature more than the traditional cultures of the Mediterranean nations.Perhaps so, but economically, a more convincing explanation is that the Great Salt Lake lies within a single administrative jurisdiction (Utah), while the Mediterranean Sea is surrounded by more than two dozen sovereign states.If Utah prohibits the discharge of sewage into the Great Salt Lake, residents of the state will certainly bear the cost of management, but they will also enjoy all the benefits brought by the move.Conversely, if a single country near the Mediterranean enacts the same anti-exclusion law, its citizens will have to bear all the costs of the move, but can only enjoy a small part of the benefits, and most of the benefits will be shared by residents of other countries.This disparity in effort and income makes every Mediterranean country prefer to wait for other countries to take environmental protection measures first, but in the Great Salt Lake area, this problem does not exist.