ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the pitfalls of regulatory approaches to air pollution and stress the potential for applying property rights solutions. The problems of regulating SO2 emissions to control the acid rain pale in comparison to the problems that we will supposedly suffer from global warming. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that solar activity may have caused global warming, and Reid Bryson, director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that dust and smoke are the primary causes of climate change. Advocates of international agreements to solve global warming problems use as an example the Montreal Protocol treaty, which regulates the use of chlorofluorocarbons. If global warming is a real phenomenon, chances are that it is being caused by many factors, ranging from carbon dioxide emissions to the deforestation.
