This research paper discusses the advantages, disadvantages and differences of various public policy approaches to the control of pollution, compares in the context of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline the benefits and costs of a developmental project with adverse environmental side effects and defines, compares and discusses non-use values as well as how they are measured and used in litigation generally and in the context of the pollution problems of LA Harbor.
For economic and political reasons, government must play a major role in controlling pollution. The issue is not whether but how government should intervene in the economy to control pollution in order to optimize the efficient allocation of resources to enhance the public good and to ensure that the burdens of pollution control are distributed as fairly as possible. By the 1960s, a general consensus developed in the industrialized countries that decisions made in the private marketplace were resulting in environmental damage on a scale which was unacceptable. In conventional economic analysis, Ruff says that "the efficiency of competitive markets depends on the identity of private costs and social costs" but that in the case of pollution, "private and social costs diverge, and private profit-maximizing decisions are not socially efficient" (23-24).
The simplest form of government control of pollution-causing activities in the economy is direct or 'command and control' regulation. This approach is "in many ways the least efficient" (Ruff 28). According to Ruff, "the aim must be to find that level of pollution abatement where the costs of further abatement begin to exceed their benefits" (22). Regulatory authorities often lack sufficient information to make intelligent decisions concerning how complex pollution problems can be solved efficiently. Government can and does set environmental standards, for example, for achieving certain levels of protection of human health and sa...