The Feasibility of Marketable Emissions Permits in the United States

In the decade of the 1970s, the United States Government vigorously pursued a policy to reduce substantially the pollution of the nation’s air and water. Beginning with the Clean Air Act in 1963, a series of laws were passed which expanded the role of the federal government in setting and enforcing environmental policy goals, set substantially more ambitious goals in terms of the purity of air and water, and increased dramatically the resources available for writing and enforcing pollution regulations. Although all the returns are not in and considerable disagreement about the exact figures remains, a reasonable estimate of the cost of environmental regulation is in the range of thirty to fifty billion dollars annually. In some industries, such as chemicals, electric power generation and mining, the cost of compliance with environmental regulation accounts for as much as ten per cent of investment expenditures, and five per cent of annual sales.2(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)