Examination on Environmental Economics - Assignment Example

Examination on Environmental Economics I. A. Clean water Act helps in ensuring that the population have a healthy life and also reduces chemical emissions that could cause both soil and air pollution. B. Point source pollution emits gasses to the environment that is a negative externality increasing social costs. C. Prior appropriation rights provide the right to use appropriately a given resource D. Provide regulations on mobile source pollution E. It is a major threat to environmental safety hence affects sustainable development. F. It helps to protect the environment from over-exploitation. G. Provides rules for solid waste management for protection of human health. H. Environmental resource purification I.

Reduces production cost J. Reduces pollution through pollution prevention regulation. K. It is significant in the analysis of cost and benefits. L. Provides precautionary measure against pollution for society's safety M. Sustainable water management N. Ensures sustainable development that considers future generation. II. 1. When the mobile source pollution level is reduced, it means there is a negative impact in the economic activities. This will reduce production levels and have a negative spillover effect on employment.

It will eventually hurt economic status of the country. 2. Mobile source pollution regulation have challenges in that the effect of pollution is spread faster over a larger area than point source pollution which is majorly concentrated in one area. For this reason, there is a challenge of monitoring and evaluation of the regulations because it requires additional costs to implement the regulatory measures. 3.An incentive based regulatory scheme is used as a cost on polluters to discourage them on increased pollution or used as a reward to those industries who use innovative ways to minimize pollution.

They include taxes and fees charged per unit of pollution. Tax is a compulsory payment for firms that will make the cost of production high hence compelling the firms to be innovative. There is also tax waiver on efficient producers who do not pollute the environment. There is also use of marketable permits that only allows for pollution by the emitting firms up to a level that costs friendly. Otherwise, the firms are forced to purchase more permits for an extra pollution per unit.

Use of liability is another scheme that firm pollution rates are regulated. It is a negative incentive which compels firms to set precautionary levels beneficial to the society. 4. Knowledge uncertainty greatly affects environmental projects and issues. The evidence of lack of knowledge on sustainable development and people continue to over-exploit the available resources such as forests and mineral reserves. Knowledge uncertainty has affected cost-benefit analysis of different projects.

There is no proper knowledge in project appraisals and feasibility tests. There is the lack of proper knowledge on proper industrial waste disposal which has affected water and air greatly. 5. RCRA has a pollution control regulation which is mainly focused in controlling waste at its generation stage while CERCLA responds when there is a breakdown in the management. 6. Other costs to be considered apart from direct engineering cost is the marginal costs. This is an extra cost incurred for an additional unit of benefit.

The other cost to consider is the opportunity cost. This cost is the cost of the best forgone alternative. 7. One of the environmental issues is Global warming. This comes as a result of greenhouse gas emission into the ecosystem. The carbon combines with other greenhouse gasses affects the ozone layer and causes global warming. Global warming comes as a result of continued use of chemicals in farming and industrial waste emissions into the ecosystem. To control global warming, it should first of all be taken into account that this is a global problem and therefore it needs cooperation between different countries.

The developed countries which are more industrialized should compensate for the gas emissions. There should be increased campaigns on organic farming and use of minimum tillage to minimize gas emissions. 8. Sustainability can be defined in this context as the degree at which development can be done in a way that meets the current generations needs without compromising on the future generation to meet their needs. A number of areas exist where sustainability is not achieved such as the use of natural resources such as forest cover.

There is an increase in human activities with an increase in population in search for means of survival and more land to cultivate. There is continued depletion of mineral resources and forests. 9. Environment plays a great role in leisure, but for sustainability there has to be trade off so that there is no degradation. When human beings are allowed to maximize marginal utility then, there will be serious environmental degradation. 10. Economics provides an in-depth understanding of how different environmental projects can sustainably promote growth through cost benefits analysis.

Work cited Command and Control Regulation from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, spring 2006.