Corporations have incentives to maximize short-term profits at the sacrifice of environmental resources and common decency (dump the chemical waste in the river and pay your employees the lowest possible wage).

This obviously means the company will quickly run out of resources and employees but depending on the severity of the deployed sacrifice, this can take decades, a time span that corporations have shown on several occasions to not care about.

My point was, make the river a private resource worth money to some organization or someone, and they will fight that corporation where it matters. Counter-balancing incentives work best, and we have already seen this kind of system work better than regulations.

As a public utility, the river is worth money to the government. If it goes to waste, less people will be able to use it to make money, which leads to less taxes.

Any agency brought up to protect the environment has per it's mission an incentive to protect the environment and doesn't suffer the problems of a corporation, namely limited funding. A government agency doesn't need to make profit to receive lots of funding if it's important enough.

Unfortunately, assigning property rights to breathable air is going to be problematic.

For air you can tax the emission of toxic fumes or particles, in order to incentivize the usage of filters and the like. Unfortunately, states in many countries are actively promoting industries like coal power generation and therefore cannot at the same time pretend they care about air quality.

Maybe if you have the time, knowledge, and financing required to pursue litigation... And allow renters the same rights... And make test kits easy to access, afford, and interpret... And...

Protect them with what authority and with what resources? Everyone raises their own militia against bad actors? What if the bad actor owns half the land in the region and all the guns?

There is something called Rule of Law. That is where the government intervenes if someone or some organization fails to follow the Law.

> What if the bad actor owns half the land in the region and all the guns?

As far as I know the government has the biggest guns.

>As far as I know the government has the biggest guns.

Not in the mythical libertarian paradise where all property is privately owned.