ABSTRACT
Since people cause pollution, we are told, people can stop pollution. The slogan seems to be logically impeccable—and yet it also seems specious. Why? It is logically impeccable because it is factually true in a trivial sense: if enough people would do certain things, which it is physically possible for them to do, pollution would stop. And it is specious because the intention behind the slogan goes beyond this trivial sense. That intention is more nearly captured in another claim, of a form with which we are all too familiar: if we wanted to stop pollution, we would. This claim is an easy analogue of such commonly valid claims as, “If I wanted another helping, I would take it.”
