Water Marketing as an Adaptive Response to the Threat of Climate Change

Demographic changes and existing water use patterns have placed tremendous pressures upon water supplies, particularly in the West. Global climate change will exacerbate pressures on water resources. The gradual warming of the atmosphere is certain to change the distribution and availability of water supplies, with potentially severe consequences for freshwater supplies. While climate change will have a significant impact on water resources through changes in the timing and volume of precipitation, altered evaporation rates, and the like, the precise nature, magnitude, timing, and distribution of such climate-induced changes are unknown. This uncertainty complicates the task of water managers who are already faced with escalating demands. This article argues that climate change, and its projected effects on water use and supply, calls for a fundamental reexamination of water institutions. In particular, this article suggests that market-based institutions are well suited to address the additional pressures on water supplies due to climate change. Many aspects of water markets, including their flexibility, decentralized nature, and ability to create and harness economic incentives, make them particularly well suited to address the uncertain water forecast. A gradual shift toward water marketing and market pricing will improve the management of water supplies, ensure more efficient allocation of available water supplies and encourage cost-effective conservation measures

Conservative Principles for Environmental Reform

Major environmental policy reform is long overdue. The current regulatory architecture was erected in the 1970s. Since then meaningful reforms have been few and far between. A few reforms and regulatory expansions were adopted in the 1980s, and Congress enacted significant reforms to the Clean Air Act in 1990. Only the most minor environmental bills have been enacted since then

Legal Obstacles to Private Ordering in Marine Fisheries

Part II of this Article surveys the challenges of marine conservation, the failures of existing regulatory regimes, and the potential for property rights in marine resources. Part III discusses the nature of private ordering, providing examples that arise from the fisheries context. Part IV discusses how legal rules can inhibit private ordering. That section focuses in particular on how antitrust law has impeded cooperative fishery management. Part V then explores possibilities for overcoming antitrust obstacles to private ordering. This Article concludes with some broader thoughts about the implications of this research for resource conservation

Money or Nothing: The Adverse Environmental Consequences of Uncompensated Land Use Control

The conventional wisdom holds that requiring compensation for environmental land use controls would severely limit environmental protection efforts. There are increasing reasons to question this assumption. Both economic theory and recent empirical research—focused primarily on the Endangered Species Act but potentially applicable to other environmental regulations that create similar incentives—demonstrate that failing to compensate private landowners for the costs of regulation discourages voluntary conservation efforts and can encourage the destruction of environmental resources. The lack of a compensation requirement also means that land use regulation is underpriced as compared to other environmental protection measures for which government agencies must pay. This results in the overconsumption of land use regulations relative to other environmental protection measures that could be more cost- effective at advancing conservation goals. Although any specific compensation proposal would present implementation questions, there are reasons to believe that a compensation requirement could improve environmental conservation efforts

Taking Property Rights Seriously: The Case of Climate Change

The dominant approach to environmental policy endorsed by conservative and libertarian policy thinkers, so-called free market environmentalism (FME), is grounded in the recognition and protection of property rights in environmental resources. Despite this normative commitment to property rights, most self-described advocates of FME adopt a utilitarian, welfare-maximization, approach to climate change policy, arguing that the costs of mitigation measures could outweigh the costs of climate change itself. Yet even if anthropogenic climate change is decidedly less than catastrophic - indeed, even if it net beneficial to the globe as whole - human-induced climate change is likely to contribute to environmental changes that violate traditional conceptions of property rights. Viewed globally, the actions of some countries - primarily developed nations (such as the United States) and those nations that are industrializing most rapidly (such as China and India) - are likely to increase environmental harms suffered by less developed nations - nations that have not (as of yet) made any significant contribution to global climate change. It may well be that aggregate human welfare would be maximized in a warmer, wealthier world, or that the gains from climate change will offset environmental losses. Such claims, even if demonstrated, would not address the normative concern that the consequences of anthropogenic global warming would infringe upon the rights of people in less-developed nations. A true FME approach to climate change policy should be grounded in a normative commitment to property rights. As a consequence, this paper suggests a complete rethinking of the conventional conservative and libertarian approach to climate change

The Fable of Federal Regulation: Reconsidering the Federal Role in Environmental Protection

This essay posits that many federal environmental laws were adopted for the wrong rea- sons. Further, it suggests that environmental protections could be improved if more policy decisions were left in the hands of state and local governments

Would the REINS Act Rein In Federal Regulation?

Federal regulation reaches nearly all aspects of modern life and is pervasive in the modern economy. Much of this regulation may be necessary or advisable, but there is understandable concern that regulatory agencies act outside the authority delegated to them by Congress. The proposed Regulations of the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act is intended to remedy this by requiring that major regulations receive the approval of Congress through an expedited process. Critics of the REINS Act claim it would severely curtain important regulatory efforts and allow for all sorts of congressional gamesmanship. In fact, the REINS Act would not hinder a sympathetic Congress from approving new federal regulations, but it would prevent the implementation of particularly unpopular or controversial regulatory initiatives. The primary effect of the legislation would be to make Congress more responsible for federal regulatory activity by forcing legislators to voice their opinion on the desirability of significant regulatory changes

Reforming Our Wasteful Hazardous Waste Policy

Federal hazardous waste regulation and cleanup programs suffer from poor prioritization, insufficient flexibility, high costs, and questionable benefits. Many of these problems are a result of excessive regulatory centralization. With the enactment of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Comprehensive Emergency Response, Cleanup and Liability Act (CERCLA, aka Superfund ) Congress centralized environmental policy questions that are, in many respects, inherently local in nature. This produced a mismatch between those jurisdictions with regulatory primacy and the nature of the environmental problems at issue. Contamination of soil and groundwater are site-specific, rarely crossing state lines. Due to the local nature of hazardous waste problems, state governments should be given the opportunity to assume leadership of hazardous waste regulation and cleanup. While the federal government has an important role to play in the regulation and management of hazardous wastes, this role requires more targeted and specialized efforts than the adoption and maintenance of a comprehensive cradle-to-grave regulatory system and a large scale waste site cleanup program that impose federal standards on local communities. Through technical guidance federal agencies can inform local waste management and cleanup decisions without imposing uniform federal standards that fit few jurisdictions well. With federal efforts confined to those areas in which the federal government possesses a comparative advantage, state governments will be freed to reassume leadership in hazardous waste policy and tailor state policies to local needs and concerns. This, in turn, could foster greater recognition of and accountability for the trade-offs inherent in hazardous waste policy, and a more justifiable regulatory regime for hazardous waste