New Pollution Control Policy - Report Example

PROPOSAL INTRODUCTION Public opinion polls in the United s over the years consistently have d a high level of concern over implementingair pollution controls to guarantee healthy air. The Clean Air Act of 1963 was an early Congressional response to the public demand for a federal assistance to solve a policy issue that originally was considered to be a state and local problem. By 1970, the public insisted that the federal government deal with the unhealthy air problem that had grown beyond the capacity of the states to resolve. Congress authorized the newly formed United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to administer the Clean Air Act as a national air program to protect the health of all citizens. Proponents and opponents of air pollution control policy now accept the protection of the public health as a political reality. The need for clean air is considered to be “a uniformly agreed-upon problem” or a “valence issue” (Baumgartner and Jones, 150). Nobody can be against the public good of clean air. Despite general agreement of the public, legislators, regulators and the regulated that clean air is important, many urban areas in the United States struggle to meet national air quality standards as the EPA continues to set stricter emission thresholds. The EPA has tracked emission levels of six criteria pollutants deemed harmful to human health - nitrogen dioxide, ground level ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and lead - since 1970. However, the persistence of the ground level ozone pollutant (commonly called either smog or ozone) troubles those who wish to protect the public health. The adverse health effects of acute and chronic exposure to ozone are more fully documented each year. While levels of some criteria pollutants (i.e. lead and carbon monoxide) have declined significantly, levels of ozone and particulate matter have not (Smith, 29). The EPA determined in 1997 that 122 million Americans, or 46% of the population, lived in smog-plagued areas (Doyle, 348). The EPA reported in 2004 that 112 million people across the nation still lived in 68 metropolitan areas classified in nonattainment of the national air quality standard for ozone. Regulators describe long-term exposure to ozone levels above the threshold set by law as extremely hazardous to human health (Smith, 34). From the critical perspective, there is a pressing need to establish radically new air pollution control policy. Contemporary business practice provides some important patterns in understanding policy new direction. It is evident that due to growing compliance costs, environmental expenditures have begun to play a major role in the policy­making decisions of companies. As a result, the environment is increasingly being used as a strategic tool to reduce cost and increase competitive advantage. Adequate and effective air pollution public policy should be largely based on firms’ strategic needs to economize and being competitive. BACKGROUND: CURRENT POLICY FAILURE The continuing political controversy surrounding compliance with the provisions of the Clean Air Act suggests that the problem of national air pollution control is not going away either quickly or easily. Solutions to this challenging policy problem often appear partial and ineffectual. Four reasons for impaired policy effectiveness are suggested. First, the way in which federal regulators define and measure compliance with the law may not achieve consensus among the disparate participants in the implementation process. Even when participants do work together, gamesmanship among players who do not see themselves as equals on a level playing field may interfere with moving toward the same goal. The lack of consensus may continue until all the key players hold to some expectation of a common outcome (Bardach, 85). A second reason policy effectiveness may be impaired is due to the many participants in the fragmented federal hierarchy who represent multiple decision or veto points in the policymaking process. These multiple decision or veto points cause the implementation process to undergo continual rounds of bureaucratic and political negotiations over rules that include bargaining and litigation every step of the way to compliance. The requirement for “a long string of clearances by actors with different perspectives” arguably is the greatest obstacle to building the consensus and agreement that can eliminate frustrating delays in compliance (Pressman and Wildavsky, 47). Federal and state legislators, regulated industry and business, and the general public do not object to the goal of clean air that protects the public health. They can and do object to an implementation process whose substantial costs to comply appear unreasonable. Third, although the Clean Air Act is a national law, it is implemented regionally and locally. Regional and local implementers face the same problem as do federal regulators of how to interpret the meaning of and measure compliance with the law. The ability of legislators and administrators within the federal hierarchy to agree on how to achieve the clean air goal may collapse under the pressure of systemic conflict. State implementers who cannot meet the specific requirements in the national law may shift the blame for their failure to comply onto nameless and faceless federal legislators and bureaucrats. Fourth, state-level implementation requires states and localities to invest funding, personnel, and other resources in a long-term effort to comply with a partially funded federal mandate and to solve a problem that may or may not originate within their jurisdictions. The need to balance the normative values of economic growth and protecting the public health can never be ignored. Practically, the EPA may not consider costs of compliance when setting each NAAQS. The need to protect the health of some citizens and the environment may run afoul of the need to prevent job loss and an economic downturn if business and industry threaten to leave or do leave a jurisdiction because they either do not want to or are unable to comply with strict federal clean air standards. Balancing the risks of adverse health conditions for some members of the population against continued economic productivity for other members may be neither politically palatable nor feasible. PROPOSAL: NEW POLLUTION CONTROL POLICY Under traditional approach to pollution control policy, pollution reduction has been often accompanied by a regress in productivity because valuable inputs are diverted from the production of good output. This causes either an increase in cost or a reduction of good output, either of which reduces efficiency. Therefore, the traditional approach views pollution reduction as having a direct and negative impact on efficiency. From this perspective, enactment of new policy norms on eco-efficiency for the majority of companies becomes mandatory. Eco-efficiency constitutes an approach that encourages a search for and adoption of environmental improvements. Therefore, implementation of eco-efficiency legislation will motivate firms to become more environmentally responsible while at the same time becoming more profitable. The rationale for this policy proposal is that firms should adopt innovative and proactive pollution reduction methods that will reduce environmental degradation and lower costs. However, in order to accomplish this goal companies must have a solid understanding of their environmental cost function and how it is affected by actions taken to reduce pollution. Another purpose of the policy is to explain to firms that that some benefit will emerge from adoption. Porter and Van de Linde have provided additional support for eco-efficiency policy by developing the Porter Hypothesis. The underlying principle of the Porter Hypothesis is that in general agents within firms may have limited rationality regarding the effects of eco-efficiency and consequently must be guided by an open government/normative intervention to make them understand how reductions in pollution promote efficiency. Thus, the Porter Hypothesis assumes: (1) pollution constitutes a form of economic inefficiency (Porter and Van de Linde, 105); (2) environmental regulations deliver a signal to companies to improve (Porter and Van de Linde, 105); and (3) that properly designed regulations yield innovations that may partially offset or more than fully offset environmental costs (Porter and Van de Linde, 106). Therefore, the basis of the Porter Hypothesis is that new environmental policy and regulations can be used to induce firms to adopt eco-efficient behavior. From the critical perspective, potential environmental policy receives a solid empirical support in the practices of companies in different industries. For example, Baxter, a global pharmaceutical firm, established a proactive program to improve environmental performance. In 1994, the program reduced hazardous waste and produced cost avoidances of $23.4 million (Schmidheny et al., 1996, p.71). Similarly, Hyde Tool, a small manufacturer of industrial tools, established a pollution reduction program that reduced wastewater from 29 million to 1.25 million gallons while saving over $200,000 annually (Epstein, 1996, p.157). Cracker Barrel likewise found that changes in production processes could bring significant savings. Working with suppliers to develop new ways to reduce trash, the company dramatically reduced the amount of disposable cardboard and saved more than $100,000 annually (Epstein, 1996, p. 47). These examples suggest that firms can use eco-efficient principles to create opportunities, to maintain or increase good outputs, decrease bad outputs, and improve performance by reducing costs. New pollution control policy, eco-efficiency regulation, aims to encourage a search for and adoption of improvements that allow companies to become more environmentally responsible while at the same time becoming more profitable (WBCSD, 2000, p.4). The goal of eco-efficiency policy is to obtain economic and ecological efficiency through the optimal use of inputs. Thus, eco-efficiency policy differs from traditional environmental regulation because it uses a value chain approach to make a direct connection between environmental targets and firm profitability by including the efficient use of the environment as part of the strategic planning of the company (Cramer, 54). Specifically, companies comply with eco-efficient norms when they implement innovative and creative methods to manufacture more or the same level of useful goods and services while simultaneously decreasing environmental pollution, resource consumption, and costs (WBCSD, 7). BIBLIOGRAPHY Baumgartner, Frank R., and Bryan D. Jones. Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 Bardach, Eugene. The Implementation Game: What Happens After a Bill Becomes a Law. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977 Cramer, J. Toward Sustainable Business: The Eco-Efficiency Challenge, Environmental Quality Management, (Fall): 53-63, 1999 Doyle, Jack. Taken for a Ride: Detroits Big Three and the Politics of Pollution. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000 Epstein, M.J. Measuring Corporate Environmental Performance: Best Practices for Costing and Managing an Effective Environmental Strategy, Chicago, IL: Irwin Porter, M. E., and C. van der Linde. “Toward a New Conception of the Environment Competitiveness Relationship,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9 (Fall): 97-118, 1995 Pressman, Jeffrey L., and Aaron Wildavsky. Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington are Dashed in Oakland. 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984 Schmidheiny, S., and F. J. L. Zorraquin. Financing Change, 1st Paperback Edition, MIT Press, 1996 Smith, Zachary A. The Environmental Policy Paradox. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2004 World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Eco-Efficiency: Creating More Value With Less Input. North Yorkshire, UK, 2000 Read More