Is the polluter pays pinciple really fundamental? an economic explanation of the relative unimportance of environmental liability and taxes in u.s. environmental law

摘要

I. The Polluter Pays Principle and the Paradoxical Insignificance of Environmental Taxes and Liability Originating in a 1972 OECD document,1 the "polluter pays" principle is now found in the environmental laws of many countries2 and also in various international environmental treaties.3 While there are various statements of the principle, they all rest upon the idea that environmental regulatory instruments should force polluters to pay for the environmental harm that they cause, thus internalizing what economists would call the social cost of pollution. In its strict, or strong form, the polluter pays principle would dictate environmental laws that would hold polluters legally responsible not only for the cost of pollution abatement or prevention measures, but also for all of the environmental damages caused by their pollution, including the cost of reparing or restoring the natural environment if possible.4 The most straightforward regulatory instruments for implementing this strong form of the polluter pays principle are taxes and liability rules. However, although many countries formally include the polluter pays principle as a guiding principle for environmental law, most national environmental laws do not rely primarily on taxes or environmental liability to implement the polluter pays principle.