Markets Versus Environment?
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Description
Ever since the beginning of the contemporary environmental movement 30 years ago, market competition has been attacked as an engine of environmental destruction. Notwithstanding the spectacular environmental as well as economic failures of centrally planned economies, the OECD nations with market-based economies have adopted a far reaching system of central planning -command and control regulation - in order to provide a clean and healthy environment. The dysfunctions and limitations of this central planning system are increasingly apparent. This essay argues for far greater use of market-based incentives to more effectively protect the environment while also promoting economic goals and democratic accountability. The relation between markets and environmental protection assumes a more complex character in the case of trade among states. In this context, there have been growing demands for adoption of uniform regulatory standards to govern economic activity throughout the common market. Uniform standards have been widely adopted in the United States and the European Union. The demand for uniform standards is now being debated in the context of international trade. Uniformity is assertedly necessary in order to protect the environment from the side-effects of competition in the extended market, and to protect the market itself from the side-effects of different regulatory standards in different states. This essay argues that uniformity of environmental regulation throughout a common market is neither necessary nor desirable. While approximation of environmental measures may be desirable in some instances, differences are often appropriate, on both environmental and economic grounds. There is also wide opportunity for use of market-based incentives for environmental protection in the multistate context. Such incentives can go far towards reconciling environmental and economic goals while accommodating diversity and flexibility. The lock-step strategy of ever-widening command regulation must re-examined, and greater use made of alternatives better suited to the needs of the earth in an era of accelerating economic integration and political pluralism.
Publication Date
1995
Recommended Citation
Stewart, Richard B., "Markets Versus Environment?" (1995). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 710.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/710
