Hydrocarbon Hysteria: Differentiating Approaches to Consumption and Contamination in Regulatory Frameworks Governing Unconventional Hydrocarbon Extraction

摘要

Traditional regulatory methods, as has been highlighted, are only successful in relation to equally familiar, and therefore predictable, impacts. New advances in hydrocarbon extraction bring new challenges and risks and with them a need for new regulatory approaches not to replace, but to supplement existing examples. In relation to contamination, the construction of an unavoidable incentive to reduce waste is the most obvious and, in the short term, one of the most effective methods of achieving this. The established mechanisms of free market economics should, therefore, be not just used, but trusted, as a basis for regulation. In the same way that responses of ecosystems to most consumption-based impacts are predictable, so too are company responses to costs. Regulatory frameworks should, therefore, exploit that predictability where they can. As such, punitive financial measures for levels of by-production above set parameters would be a viable basis for such a proposal.