Market Forces Can Help The Environment

This article addresses the limits of environmental reforms with a "command and control" approach that sets impossibly lofty goals in an expensive regulatory environment without basic cost-benefit analysis. Citing Superfund as a "glaring example of what can go wrong," this article supports Harvard University's Robert Stavins, an environmental economist, who calls for the use of market instruments in green policymaking, including tradable permits, charging systems, cuts in government subsidies and the lowering of market barriers.