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Upon hearing the term market-based approaches to (or economic incentives for) environmental protection, some people assume this means letting unfettered competition between unregulated private firms determine how clean our air or water will be, how much open space we will have, or how many fish stocks will be driven to collapse.

Now, decades after the first environmental laws were passed in this country, policymakers face many choices when seeking to solve environmental problems. Will taxing polluters for their discharges be more effective than fining them for not meeting certain emission standards? Will a regulatory agency find it less costly to enforce a ban or oversee a system of tradable permits? Which strategy will reduce a pollutant the quickest?

Prior to the passage of Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), there had been a lively debate involving Congress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and academics, about the need for reducing sulfur dioxide (SO) emissions due to the problem of acid rain. In addition to domestic pressure, Canada was putting political pressure on the United States to decrease acid rain. Just after the passage of the CAAA the United States and Canada signed the Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement, aimed at controlling transboundary acid rain. How damaging is acid rain? The National Acid Rain Precipitation Assessment Program found that acid rain causes minor damage to crops and modest damage to aquatic life in acidified lakes and streams. Burtraw et al. (1998) estimate the expected environmental damages from acid rain on recreational activities, residential visibility, and morbidity to be about $13 per capita in 1990.

The success of the United States sulfur dioxide (SO) trading program has led to worldwide interest in emissions trading. The program has become a model for policymakers in the United States and in other countries that are considering cap-and-trade programs to reduce emissions. Once a theoretical option discussed only by economists, emissions trading is now considered a mainstream policy instrument in the United States with bipartisan political support. Internationally, emissions trading is no longer considered a . It is now a fundamental component of the international framework to address climate change. Even developing countries from Chile to China are beginning to consider emissions trading programs to control conventional pollutants ().

The world of conservation is rapidly changing. The increasing severity and scope of widespread anthropogenic threats to biological diversity can now be seen to impact even local conservation efforts. As these impacts become more visible in our backyards, a new reality has begun to shake the status quo. Brave actions to reverse these disturbing trends are being called for that fall outside traditional operating procedures. One need only consider the issue of global climate change to understand the pattern. In less than a decade, discussion of the potential impact of global climate change has progressed from a largely theoretical debate in halls of academia to a fact being reported in local newspapers. Meanwhile, on-the-ground conservation efforts are awakening to the reality that they have to play catch-up.

Acid deposition was first recognized as a large-scale ecological threat about forty years ago when Swedish scientists tied the environmental decline of lakes to acid rain. Solving this problem presented a special challenge because the sources of the pollution were hundreds of miles away, in other countries that had little at stake in the water quality and biological diversity of Swedish lakes. Today we recognize that our most important environmental problems can only be solved through international cooperation, often at a global scale. Efforts to deal with acid deposition across political boundaries serve as a model for dealing with other international environmental problems such as greenhouse gas emissions, ozone depletion, and protection of migratory birds and marine mammals.