CONTROLLING POLLUTION

Controlling Pollution by Taxes, Regulations and Tradable Emission

Controlling Pollution by Taxes, Regulations and Tradable Emission

Introduction

Pollution is the unwanted release of waste materials and gases from industries and household sector. These releases affect the overall quality of natural resources and social environment. This release can be specifically in the form of water, air, soil, light, radioactivity and visual pollution (Arceivala and Asolekar, 2007 pp 66). Therefore, these sources of pollution can result in various diseases and problems in the society. They can specifically cause cancer, asthma and other various allergies. These diseases can aggravate and can be lethal for both the human being and animals which can result in billions of dollar in cost for the country.

Although pollution is as old as the humanity is, but the impacts of it were highlighted in the late 19th and 20th century. The human activity have always resulted in the production of waste materials , but when the industrialization took place the production of waste materials multiplied by many folds. This was further intensified with the increasing number of population and large-scale industrialization. In the beginning, the pollution was seen only as a source of hindrance for e.g. dust, litter and odor (Bright and Bishop, 1991 pp 32). However, during the era of 1960s the effects of pollution on the ecosystem and biosphere became the main point of attention. A very important publication relating to this issue is the book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson that was published in the year 1962. The focus of this book was to bring the environmental hazard into the knowledge of masses for e.g. the use of pesticides. In the 19th century, several countries issued hindrance acts and clean air acts. After the second half of the 20th century, specific regulation and legislations were enacted for the protection of soil pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, environmental impact and waste management. Mainly all of the legislation were based on the direct regulations i.e. permits.

For the control of pollution, there is a legislation whose central principle is that polluter should pay for the principle. This means that polluter should pay the expenses of the environmental damage done by his act. In the initial phase, the pollution control was related to the installing of filter that used to capture toxic waste and substance (Bright and Bishop, 1991 pp 33). When the effects of using these sorts of strategies were analyzed in different researches, it was found that they were the cause of extra pollution for example the disposal of dirty filter was itself more hazardous. Thus regulations' were brought in over the years that worked for the better production process with less pollution.

Taxes

During the late 1997, 160 countries met in Kyoto. Japan was one of the few countries, which agreed to cut back its greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide emission (Connor, 2010 pp 65). As per the protocol, the countries signing it would reduce their emission by 5 till the 2008 - 12. Some European countries set the target much higher ...