I wonder if there is a way to actually empower individuals when it comes to environmental issues, like if each of us had some kind of right to the various resources we lived near. For example, experts might determine that there’s only so much water that could be sustainably extracted from a given source in a year. Well, just divide that amount among the people who depend on that source and ration representative credits to them. To get water from that source, one would have to be paid for with a corresponding amount of credits. People can sell the credits they don’t need to anyone who wants extra. Water intensive operations like hydraulic fracturing or pistachio farming would cease to get their water for free. They’d have to directly compensate the people for using this resource by buying water credits. The idea would probably crash the economy, since capitalism depends on cheap access to natural resources.