Week 8 - Command and Control Solutions vs. Market Solutions

Our discussion in this week's sections will draw on Vig and Kraft's Environmental Policy, chapter 9, in addition to chapters 14 and 15 in Layzer.

"Market-Based Solutions: Acid Rain and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990"

• According to Layzer (2006), what are two reasons conservatives believe market-based approaches are superior to conventional approaches?
• Should the federal government “dictate levels of pollution control required of individual companies,” as it did in the 1970 Clean Air Act? Or should it “limit total emissions and distribute tradeable allowances to all polluters, thereby creating incentives for individual companies to reduce their own pollution at lowest cost” (Layzer: 2006, 385)?
• Critics often cite acid rain regulations as evidence of misplaced enviromental priorities, saying the 1990 National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program report made clear that acid rain does not pose a serious threat? Do you agree or disagree with this critique? Why, or why not?
• Has science played a sufficient role in the development of U.S. acid rain policy? If not, why not, and how might its impact be increased?
• Why do proponents believe emissions-trading programs are more than effective, economically and ecologically, than uniform emission limitations? Can you think of any drawbacks to the emission-trading approach?
  

"Ecosystem-Based Solutions: Restoring the Florida Everglades"

• Given that human beings have fundamentally altered virtually every ecosystem on earth, what should be the target of a restoration--the ecosystem's presettlement state? If that is not feasible, what previous configuration of plants, animals, and ecological processes should be reproduced?
• How should the restoration be accomplished? Should planners rely on technology and intensive management to control natural systems, or should they devise approaches that allow nature to run its course and require human development to be compatible with it?
• What are the appropriate criteria for measuring success?
• Should the federal government spend $4 billion or more to support the Everglades restoration? Why, or why not?
• What might environmentalists do to maintain or increase public support for the Everglades restoration over its projected twenty-year lifetime?
• Is restoring an ecosystem's ecological health a legitimate goal? If so, what are likely to be the most significant obstacles to achieving it?
  

"How much are these fish worth in those 170 lakes that account for four percent of the lake area of New York? And does it make sense to spend billions of dollars controlling emissions from sources in Ohio and elsewhere if you're talking about a very marginal volume of dollar value, either in recreational terms or in commercial terms?" -David Stockman, head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during President Reagan's first term