|
Saturday Schedule
Program
Annual
Meeting
Home
|
|
Saturday, January 4, 2003
|
8:30-10:15 a.m.
Section on Environmental Law
Sanford E. Gaines, University of Houston, Chair |
Wilson A
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Mezzanine Level |
Pollution Trading: Promises and Pitfalls
Moderator:
Sanford E. Gaines, University of Houston
Speakers: - Dallas Burtraw, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future,
Washington, D.C.
- David Doniger, Policy Director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council, Washington, D.C.
- Richard Drury, Legal Director, Communities for a Better Environment, Oakland, California
- Paul Faeth, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C.
Promises: Since the beginnings of environmental regulation, economists and other reformers have touted market-based approaches as more flexible, more efficient, and more effective than traditional command-and-control regulation of behavior. A favorite market-based approach is to give polluters (or users of a resource) a transferable pollution or use allowance that they can trade among themselves in an open market. The sulfur dioxide (acid rain) control regime set up in the Clean Air Act 1990 Amendments is held up as a leading success story for emissions trading or transferable quota systems. Other proposals or programs for environmental trading include basin-wide water pollution trading, international emissions trading of carbon dioxide emissions (and/or "sinks"), and quid-pro-quo development rights exchanges in endangered species or wetland habitats.
Pitfalls: Analysts, though, identify factors that may, or should, constrain the use of pollution or resource trading. How is quantity measured and the equivalence of the trade determined? How is the after-trade behavior of the market participants monitored and enforced? Trades can result on pollution "hot-spots," raising environmental justice concerns. Some analysts fundamentally question the real effectiveness or efficiency of such systems.
Our panelists, all active participants in the development, implementation, or critique of trading programs, will debate when, how, or even whether, we should use trading programs to meet environmental goals.
Business Meeting at Program Conclusion
|
|