ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607080141
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
THE HOLIER versions of radical environmentalism, opposed to compromise in any form, ignore the reality that humans are part of nature, too. Homo sapiens by its nature has been tinkering with its habitat for millennia, and isn't about to exchange advances in material well-being for an unnatural (for humans) absence of artifacts.
At the other extreme are property-rights partisans who claim a right to do anything with one's possessions that one pleases. They ignore economic reality. If unfettered by environmental regulations, property owners could reap quick profits from environment-degrading activities while diverting the associated costs - dirtied water, befouled air, extinguished species and the like - for society as a whole to suffer and subsidize.
Fortunately, the extremes don't exhaust the possibilities. One middle-ground approach - which Virginia would do well to take more seriously - is market-oriented environmental regulation. Details vary, but such efforts have a common thread: They seek to get more environmental protection for less cost by relying on market incentives, rather than bureaucratic fiat, to do the job.
In several areas of environmental concern, reports William Fulton in last month's issue of Governing magazine, interesting experiments in market-oriented regulation are under way:
In South Florida, a system of "mitigation credits" is being used to encourage wetlands restoration and channel development pressures where they'll do the least wetlands harm. Credits are earned by private entrepreneurs who restore degraded wetlands; the credits can then be used, or sold to people to use, to get permission to develop other wetlands. The price of a credit is set by the market, with the proceeds going to the wetlands restoration. The number of credits required for developing a specific wetlands property, however, is set by regulators and rises according to its quality as a wetland. Pristine wetlands are off-limits.
In Chicago, the Board of Trade annually oversees a national auction of "emissions allowances" that allow electric utilities and other companies to emit sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Under the trading system, established by Congress in the 1990 Clean Air Act, plants that outperform a tightened nationwide emissions standard can sell their unused allowances to dirtier plants. One result: development of better clean-up technologies that have made it more cost-effective for all plants to meet higher emission standards.
In the arid Southwest, a number of plans to make water rights transferable between geographic regions are under negotiation among various governments and public authorities. The hope is that using a market mechanism to determine the most efficient allocation of a scarce resource will help counter pressure in a chronically thirsty region for environment-unfriendly construction of more dams.
Environmental trading works, Fulton stresses, only as a supplement to government regulation, not a replacement for it. But when appropriately employed, the early returns suggest, market-oriented environmentalism can make environmental protection easier. That may not please radical environmentalists who see such an approach as establishing a "right to pollute," or property-rights advocates who decry any restrictions on the use of property. But it ought to be of interest to realists who understand that a sustaining environment needs to be both used and preserved.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB