Global Environmental Protection Board

Mission Statement:

To set a specific average cost to humanity for each type of measurable pollution caused by human activity and pressure all governments worldwide to institute a global tax to account for the true cost of each activity and encourage a swift transition to more sustainable options.

Foundational Principles of the GEPB

The main goal of GEPB is to protect key global commons (air, soil, water, and climate) so that everyone can have optimal sustainable access to all the necessities of a prosperous existence now and in the future. In order to accomplish that, the GEPB will follow these core principles:

Transparency

All internal meetings, activities and reports made by the GEPB must be publicly viewable. Reasoning for each price setting proposal will be well documented, as well updated and modified as new information becomes available.

Inclusivity and Fairness

GEPB board members and scientific advisors need to come from all of the regions of the world to ensure that each region is represented fairly, based on the number of people who live in each world’s region.

We will coordinate with governments, corporations, and other interested parties to ensure that prices and taxes are set according to the same principles across the globe to ensure a level playing field for everyone.

We will allow the public to have a voice in the GEPB process through forums, polls, and occasional votes whenever the cost of a given type of pollution will have important factors and implications that go beyond just the scientific aspect.

Where some areas would be clearly affected more than others by certain types of pollution, efforts will be made to compensate or clean up those areas directly, or, in extreme cases, to pay for the relocation of affected people to unpolluted regions.

Neutral Bias

We must continuously strive to ensure that donations or funding from special interest groups will not affect the board’s decision-making in any manner. Sources of all donations and funding above $1000 USD will be made public.

Board members must all be thoroughly vetted scientific experts who hold demonstrable understanding in directly relevant fields.

All board members' financial transactions must be made public during their tenure to ensure bribes and corruption do not occur at any level.

Scientific Accuracy

All GEPB’s official pollution costing analyses and proposals must be peer reviewed and agreed-upon by a panel of reputable unbiased scientists representing all regions of the world.

In terms of what kinds of expertise should have more weight than others at GEPB, as a general rule, hard natural science expertise should be valued more than soft social science expertise. In other words, it’s ecology over economics.