Document Type

Article

Date

2009

Keywords

environment, environmental, regulation, climate change, global warming, regulatory instruments, instrument choice, emissions trading, upstream, downstream, inputs, outputs, fossil fuels, cap and trade, pollution prevention, end-of-the-pipe

Language

English

Disciplines

Economic Policy | Environmental Policy

Description/Abstract

This article evaluates an environmental protection instrument that the literature has hitherto largely overlooked, Dirty Input Limits (DILs), quantitative limits on the inputs that cause pollution. DILs provide an alternative to cumbersome output-based emissions trading and performance standards. DILs have played a role in some of the world's most prominent environmental success stories. They have also begun to influence climate change policy, because of the impossibility of imposing an output-based cap on transport emissions. We evaluate DILs' administrative advantages, efficiency, dynamic properties, and capacity to better integrate environmental protection efforts. DILs, we show, not only have significant advantages that make them a good policy tool, they also have the capacity to help us fruitfully reconceptualize environmental law in more holistic fashion.

Additional Information

Harvard Environmental Law Review, Vol. 22, 2009. Temple University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2008-61

Source

Metadata from SSRN

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