A Warning about Water Quality Trading in the Chesapeake
This Memorial Day weekend, boaters, swimmers, fishers and others will flock to the Chesapeake Bay to mark the traditional, if not quite calendrically accurate, beginning of summer. They'll bring their wallets with them, of course, thus supporting businesses and and jobs up and down the Bay. After a day in, on or near the water, many of them will tuck into a meal of crabcakes, made from blue crabs harvested in the Bay.
Recreation and commerce are two of the most important uses of the Bay, and certainly the best known. But another use, less advertised and far less understood, is as a dumping ground for pollution. Some of that pollution comes from rainwater runoff from roads and other hard surfaces, carrying motor oil and other substances into the Bay. Some comes from overfertilized lawns. And a significant chunk, including 44 percent of the Bay's load of nitrogen and phosphorous, the most worrisome pollutants, comes from agriculture. That includes concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the region, as well as largely unregulated crop farms whose fertilizer runs off into Bay tributaries.
Despite the huge importance to the region of a healthy Bay, the simple truth is that human …
Following is the first of two Dan Farber blog entries reposted today from LegalPlanet.
Bureaucrats aren’t very popular. But consider the alternatives when it comes to dealing with environmental problems. Basically, bureaucrats are part of the executive branch of government. For instance, the head of EPA is appointed by the President and can be removed by the President at any time. (A few agencies such as the SEC enjoy some protection from presidential removal power, but that’s not true for any of the environmental agencies.) I explained in my last post why the free market won’t generally solve environmental problems. So that leaves the three branches of government: the courts, the executive branch, and Congress.
Most people who don’t like regulations also don’t like the idea of using courts to solve social problems. In the case of environmental problems, the reluctance is …
The The following is the second of two Dan Farber blog entries reposted today from LegalPlanet.
The key to understanding the economics of environmental protection is the concept of externalities. An externality is simply a cost that one person or firm imposes on another. In general, an externality means that an activity is causing more harm than it should.
Of course, a company or individual could decide to voluntarily correct the problem to eliminate the externality. But if the cost is significant, many people will not be altruistic enough to bear a heavy cost in order to help someone else. And corporations, which have a fiduciary duty to protect their own shareholders, are not in the business of being altruistic toward outsider.
If only a few people are on the receiving side of the externality, they might be able to enter a contract with the creator of …
In the nearly 20 years since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entered into force, the linkages between trade and environmental harm have become clearer than ever. Trade agreements can lead to significant adverse environmental impacts, particularly when countries do not have sufficient environmental laws, policies, and institutions—and trade alone will not increase the demand for higher environmental standards. Instead, free trade agreements (FTAs) may lead to significant increases in pollution and serious adverse impacts from certain economic sectors.
CPR Member Scholars Carmen Gonzalez, David Hunter, John Knox, and I sent a letter today to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to express our concerns. We argued that when the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative drafts trade promotion authority legislation to implement the Trans Pacific Partnership and other future trade agreements, it should include strong environmental protection provisions. We make eight recommendations for …
a(broad) perspective
Today’s post is third in a series on a recent CPR white paper, Reclaiming Global Environmental Leadership: Why the United States Should Ratify Ten Pending Environmental Treaties. Each month, this series will discuss one of these ten treaties. Previous posts are here.
Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal Adopted and Opened for Signature on March 22, 1989 Entered into Force on May 5, 1992 Signed by the United States on March 22, 1990 Sent to the Senate, May 17, 1991, and approved by the Senate on August 11, 1992
Loaded with toxic ash from Philadelphia waste incinerators, the Khian Sea, a cargo ship, left port in 1986 – and spent two years wandering at sea attempting to dispose the ash. Some of the ash was dumped in Haiti as so-called “topsoil,” and the remaining ash disappeared …
EPA’s March 27 release of a proposed rule to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new fossil-fuel power plants has reignited the long-standing debate over whether the Clean Air Act is an appropriate mechanism for controlling industrial sources. Congressional bills to repeal EPA’s CAA authority have been repeatedly (though unsuccessfully) introduced. Many environmentalists, while welcoming EPA’s initiative in the absence of any alternative, have suggested that new federal climate legislation would be preferable to applying the CAA.
In a recently published article, Climate Change, the Clean Air Act, and Industrial Pollution, published in a UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy symposium on the Clean Air Act and GHG regulation, I take up a slice of the complex debate about the value of the CAA. I explore how using the Clean Air Act to reduce GHGs from stationary sources, including industrial and fossil-fuel electrical …
Earlier this month Washington State’s Department of Ecology released its integrated climate response strategy, Preparing for a Changing Climate. The strategy again demonstrates that the state is a leader when it comes to preparing for climate change impacts (see also NRDC’s recent report examining climate preparedness in all 50 states).
What makes Washington a leader? Well, the political leadership is willing to address climate change impacts, and the scientific community is active and engaged and generates the information and data needed to make decisions on climate change adaptation actions. (None of this discussion, of course, should mean giving any less urgency to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the first place). Remarkably, the state has made rough economic calculations for the cost of inaction—$10 billion by 2020 as a result of increased health costs, flooding and coastal destruction, forest fires, drought, and other impacts—and …
a(broad) perspective
Today’s post is second in a series on a recent CPR white paper, Reclaiming Global Environmental Leadership: Why the United States Should Ratify Ten Pending Environmental Treaties. Each month, this series will discuss one of these ten treaties. Previous posts are here.
Antarctica is the coldest, driest, highest, most pristine, and least inhabited continent, and it has the largest contained ecosystem on the planet. Home to whales, seals, penguins, petrels, and many animals and plants found nowhere else on earth, Antarctica also plays an integral role in regulating global environmental processes.
Though largely isolated from …
When the United States signed NAFTA, it also signed the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), which allows, among other things, for citizens to submit complaints to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) with claims that their own governments are failing to enforce environmental laws.
That key provision is in danger, a group of CPR Member Scholars say in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. The letter was signed by CPR Member Scholars Rebecca Bratspies, Carmen G. Gonzalez, David Hunter, John H. Knox, Noah Sachs, Dan Tarlock, and Chris Wold.
The citizen submissions can result in investigative reports by the CEC Secretariat, which have in some cases led to real improvements in policy, particularly in Mexico, the Member Scholars write. The NAFTA governments, through the EPA Administrator and her counterparts, must approve, through a 2/3 vote, CEC Secretariat recommendations for reports. From 1996 to …
With congressional action on climate change at a standstill, EPA’s new source performance standards (NSPSs) for greenhouse gases (GHGs) from new power plants should be applauded. As required by the Clean Air Act, the agency is doggedly moving forward to establish emission standards for GHGs, air pollutants that unquestionably endanger human health and welfare. EPA deserves praise for setting a strong standard and proposing it notwithstanding political heat. The glass is half-full.
While attention is properly focused on what EPA has accomplished, it is important not to lose sight of what could be better. One concern is the standard’s flexibility: it lets new power plants (presumably coal-fired) violate the standard now and catch up in the future (presumably through the installation of carbon capture and storage (CCS)). In the somewhat unlikely event that utilities take advantage of that flexibility, it could give coal-fired power continued …
