| On November 15, 1990, the Congress of the United States amended the Clean Air Act for the third time in twenty years. This thesis is a review and critique of the development of the acid rain control policy codified in the 1990 amendments as Title IV. The amendments include, for the first time, provisions to address acid rain--air pollution that has been transformed and transported over long distances. Title IV also embodies the first large scale adoption of market principles and economic incentives in the cause of environmental protection. The acid rain control amendments are being hailed as a break with past environmental protection practice and are being offered as a model for further regulatory reform.;A review of the acid rain policymaking process provides a recent and concrete example of the two central concerns inherent in public policy: (1) the making of decisions that establish institutional arrangements, or structures, that both constrain and liberate individual action at the operational level; and, (2) the search for the boundary between autonomous (market-like) behavior and collective decision making. The policy responds to regulatory reform recommendations concerned with improving the effectiveness, accountability, and cost-effectiveness of environmental protection. As a model for future policymaking, the policy goes beyond and encompasses more than the welfare economics ideal of static economic efficiency and the "free market environmentalism" emphasis on private property and common law.;The acid rain policy represents an interesting chapter in the long debate over the proper role of government in the regulation of American business and in particular, over what form regulation should take. The thesis looks at the historic and geographic roots of the acid rain policy and considers the set of legal, social, and economic relations embedded in the policy which define the nature of its legal controls over pollution and its inverse, environmental quality. It explores whether the creation of the emissions allowance trading system changes the social relationships that prevailed under the pre-amended Clean Air Act. It responds to and rebuts the concerns of some critics that the policy represents an alienation of the public's right to clean air. |
