If you\'ve got to work in central London today, then congratulations. It may not feel like it, but pricing roads makes sense, as it makes sense to pay for groceries at the checkout rather than through the general tax bill. Just as the Russians no longer stand in bread lines, British drivers should stop queuing. They queue because government has failed to provide sufficient road capacity, but at least there has been progress.

Here\'s a question for you. Say that I have an obsolete, useless Commodore computer in my garage. You offer to take it apart, recycle the electrical parts, and sell the excess metal for scrap. I gladly give you the electronic albatross, but rather than neatly recycling it, you incompetently or irresponsibly disassemble and deposit the innardsósome of which may be toxicóin your backyard. Who is responsible for the mess: you or me? If you answered that I\'m responsible, you\'re part of an unusual international consensus that was expanded and reinforced in Geneva recently. The Parties to the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste and Their Disposal met in December to expand the treaty\'s 1994 ban on movements of waste from rich to poor countries.

Last week marked the sixth meeting of the Convention of Parties to the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, a treaty that seeks to eliminate human and environmental harm caused by the trade in hazardous waste. Among other things, the meeting discussed how to ban trade in plastic and electronic-goods waste and certain chemicals. But in truth, halting the trade in waste between industrialized and developing countries will do more harm to people. Indeed, the Basel convention was never even necessary. It was a response by the international community to a few misrepresented claims of exports of hazardous waste to developing countries, against which laws already existed. The treaty was agreed upon in 1989 and came into force in 1992. Subsequently, 62 parties approved the Basel Ban Amendment -- not yet in force -- which prohibits the trade in hazardous waste between industrialized and developing countries.