8 - Air Pollution Control Laws: Common but Differentiated Responsibilities for Managing the Atmosphere

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Energy law does not function in a vacuum. All energy production entails environmental impacts. The burning of carbon fuels and biomass produces greenhouse gases, with their attendant global implications for climate change, and at the same time produces air pollution, which harms the health of persons locally and contributes to tranboundary air pollution problems such as “acid rain” or the “atmospheric brown cloud” (ABC) phenomena. Although national governments currently only make halting progress at best when addressing emission of greenhouse gases, their national laws to control air pollution are marked with some success. Experience with successful air pollution control systems in some nations provides guidance for how all nations can meet their common responsibility to protect the public health from poisonous air pollution.

While addressing their duty to abate air pollution, nations also can make a major and common contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Despite contemporary political stalemates over the adherence by the Russian Federation or the United States of America to the Kyoto Protocol, much progress on reducing carbon dioxide emissions can be made in the course of enhancing the effectiveness of air pollution laws. Those who debate climate change have tended to devote rather too little attention to how the experience gained in abating pollution of the atmosphere can be applied to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Air pollution is a significant health hazard in most large cities around the world.