ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the pitfalls of regulatory approaches to air pollution and stress the potential for applying property rights solutions. Evidence suggests that political solutions to pollution problems will be dominated by special interests rather than by rationally impartial experts who calculate benefits and costs. Consider, for example, how poorly the regulatory process worked with the New Source Performance Standards of the Clean Air Act of 1977. The problems of regulating sulfur dioxide emissions to control acid rain pale in comparison to the problems that will supposedly suffer from global warming. According to some experts, the Earth's climate over the next hundred years will become substantially warmer; as a result, forests will shift northward; sea levels will rise, flooding beaches and coastal cities; rainfall patterns will change; air pollution will worsen and floods, fires, droughts, and insect plagues will increase. If Chicken Little is right, free market environmentalism suggests two avenues for dealing with global warming.
