[author: Alexandra Ellerbeck]

Climate change has not been a major feature in U.S. trade agreements. That may change under President-elect Joe Biden. Biden on the campaign trail called for conditioning future trade agreements on partners’ ability to meet their climate targets under the Paris climate agreement, which he plans to rejoin when he enters office Wednesday.

Public policy can steer incentives for a more effective response to climate change, says Daniel Esty of Yale University

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES are often based on thou-shalt-not rules. They signal to the market what is not desired. Though incentives to spur industry to action also exist, they are overshadowed by these “red lights”. Daniel Esty, an environmental lawyer at Yale University, wants to change this.

[author: Ridgway Hall]

At ACOEL’s meeting in Williamsburg last month Dan Esty challenged us to undertake a multi-year project to transform the legal framework for environmental protection. He argued persuasively that our country has outgrown its tolerance for command and control regulation, and that advances in emissions modeling and risk assessment plus the ready availability of abundant and low cost data now make possible a shift to a market-driven system. This would allow a price to be put on pollution, or “harm”, and eliminate externalities: that is, everyone must either eliminate or pay for his or her pollution.