Page 100 - Fundamentals of Air Pollution

70 5. The Philosophy of Air Pollution Control

maximize cost effectiveness and is called the cost-benefit strategy. These
strategies may result in lower emissions from existing processes or promote
process modifications which reduce pollution generation.

V. ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS

The situation with regard to economic considerations has been so well
stated in the First Report of the British Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution (1) that this section contains an extensive quotation from that
report.

Our survey of the activities of the Government, industry and voluntary bodies
in the control of pollution discloses several issues which need further enquiry. The
first and most difficult of these is how to balance the considerations which determine
the levels of public and private expenditure on pollution control. Some forms of
pollution bear more heavily on society than others; some forms are cheaper than
others to control; and the public are more willing to pay for some forms of pollution
control than for others. There are also short and long-term considerations: in the
short-term the incidence of pollution control on individual industries or categories
of labor may be heavy; but . . . what may appear to be the cheapest policy in the
short-term may prove in the long-term to have been a false economy.
While the broad outlines of a general policy for protecting the environment are not
difficult to discern, the economic information needed to make a proper assessment of
the considerations referred to in the preceding paragraph . . . seems to us to be
seriously deficient. This is in striking contrast with the position regarding the scien-
tific and technical data where, as our survey has shown, a considerable amount of
information is already available and various bodies are trying to fill in the main
gaps. The scientific and technical information is invaluable, and in many cases may
be adequate for reaching satisfactory decisions, but much of it could be wasted if
it were not supported by some economic indication of priorities and of the best
means of dealing with specific kinds of pollution.
So, where possible, we need an economic framework to aid decision making
about pollution, which would match the scientific and technical framework we
already have. This economic framework should include estimates of the way in
which the costs of pollution, including disamenity costs, vary with levels of pollution;
the extent to which different elements contribute to the costs; how variations in
production and consumption affect the costs; and what it would cost to abate
pollution in different ways and by different amounts. There may well be cases
where most of the costs and benefits of abatement can be assessed in terms of
money. Many of the estimates are likely to be speculative, but this is no reason for
not making a start. There are other cases where most of the costs and benefits
cannot be given a monetary value. In these cases decisions about pollution abatement
must not await the results of a full economic calculation: they will have to be
based largely on subjective judgments anyway. Even so, these subjective judgments
should be supported by as much quantitative information as possible, just as deci-
sions about health and education are supported by extensive statistical data. Further,
even if decisions to abate pollution are not based on rigorous economic criteria, it
is still desirable to find the most economic way of achieving the abatement.