Air Pollution Credit-Trading
One Size Won't Fit All
Credit-trading proposals to allow polluting companies to swap entitlements to engage in a wide variety of potentially harmful activity – emitting air pollutants that contribute to acid rain, or including quantities of lead in gasoline, or releasing mercury into water systems, or releasing greenhouse gases – have become increasingly popular in public policy discussions.
CPR Member Scholars have taken a cautious view toward such credit-trading proposals. They argue that properly designed trading programs can be constructive additions to the regulatory toolkit, but that greater emphasis should be placed on design in order to ensure that trading programs promote and achieve serious and real improvements in environmental quality. CPR Member Scholars' commentary on emissions trading programs includes:
- Comments on EPA's Mercury Credit-Trading Proposal. Read Catherine O'Neill's January 3, 2005 comments on EPA's proposed mercury pollution trading credit scheme.
- CPR White Paper. Read Mercury, Risk and Justice, Catherine O'Neill's white paper on the mercury pollution hot spots that would result from the Bush Administration's proposed cap-and-trade approach, and how it would affect minority communities (CPR White Paper #405, October 2004)
- A CPR Perspective. Read Rena Steinzor’s CPR Perspective article on cap-and-trade programs: Emissions Trading: 'Market-based' Regulatory Tools: Toward Better Bubbles. And read Mercury, a CPR Perspective by Catherine O'Neill, Rena Steinzor and (then Member Scholar) Lisa Heinzerling.
