hi in this video we are going to talk about policy instruments those are the tools that we use to compel behavior change to to get people or industries factories governments to do the things that we want them to do and we're going to talk about six different policy instruments some of them we've talked about already and some of the policies we've discussed and others we'll talk about now related to the clean air act or they'll be coming up soon in the clean water act or the national environmental policy act but the six policy instruments that we're going to talk about are bans permits technology and performance standards information-based policies and economic-based policies and we'll give a couple of examples of each and talk about some of their strengths and weaknesses so the first policy instrument that we're going to talk about is a ban that's a prohibition on a behavior or on the use of a product one example of a ban is in the endangered species act in the esa where we have a prohibition on take remember that's the ban on take take is uh means to wound harm kill collect hunt trap any species on the endangered species list and the endangered species act has a prohibition on take that's section 10 of the endangered species act and it comes with stiff penalties if you're found to do any of those things another example of a ban that we have talked about is in the clean air act and the montreal protocol and that's a ban on ozone depleting chemicals those chlorofluorocarbons that deplete the stratospheric ozone layer that prevents uv rays from the sun from reaching the earth's surface and in the early 90s the united nations and nations around the globe promulgated the montreal protocol an international treaty an agreement between countries to ban the production and the use of these ozone-depleting chemicals the next policy instrument that we will talk about are permits permits are restrictions or limits or regulations on behavior but they still allow you to participate in that behavior they just kind of give you permission to do it so without the permit you're not permitted to participate in a certain behavior and with the permit you are it doesn't always relate to a particular behavior it might relate to the use of a certain product but essentially a good example of a permit is something like your driver's license you're not allowed to drive a car unless you have met the certain training requirements passed the test gone through the class those kinds of things another example of a permit is the license that you get in order to be a pesticide applicator or your license or certification for um asbestos removal and asbestos monitoring or water quality monitoring um other permits might relate to health and safety requirements like you can take the class to get your has whopper certification to handle hazardous materials and some permits come with performance and technology requirements performance requirements are things like the vehicle emissions standards that your car is required to meet in new york state if your car isn't meeting those vehicle emission standards it's emitting stuff from the tailpipe that goes above the the allowed threshold in new york state then your car doesn't get the certification or the permit it needs to be driven your vehicle safety requirements are technology requirements you have to have working seat belts working headlights and blinkers and those kinds of things if you don't have those technology requirements then your car doesn't get certified and permitted to drive on the road so that's a ban and a permit and we'll move on and look at a couple other policy instruments so next we have a technology standard a technology standard is a type of regulation where the government mandates that you use a certain kind of technology that the government believes will achieve its goals for reducing pollution or keeping people safe a good example of a technology standard is in the clean air act where the government says that new uh new pollution sources these are new industrial facilities being constructed now that these new source pollution new sources of pollution have to use what the government calls best available emissions technologies so these are devices they might be scrubbers in a smokestack or filters on a particular piece of machinery which are designed to achieve the maximum emissions technology the maximum emissions reduction that um uh that any technology existing today is able to achieve so we call it the best available emissions technology and the best available technology changes over time as technology improves and new pieces of machinery that are able to reduce emissions even more become available on the market the government will upgrade the best available technology to something new but essentially they're requiring you to have a certain piece of technology installed in your industrial facility another example of a technology standard in the clean air act is the reasonable reasonable available emissions technology this is a requirement for existing industrial facilities not the new sources it's difficult for existing sources of pollutants that are already constructed to upgrade to the best available technology of today we're talking about facilities that may have been built in the 1950s and it's just impossible to install that newest technology so the reasonable available emissions technology says that those facilities have to install what is reasonably and that includes economically reasonable technology to achieve their maximum emissions reduction but it might not be as as good as the best available technology another example of a technology standard exists in hunting regulations when we looked at the new york state department of environmental conservation hunting regulations we saw technology standards related to the types of um of weapons that you can use and firearms and things in order to go hunting so we have seasons for bow hunting and muzzle loading those are different hunting technologies and those are the only technologies that you can use during those during those seasons next we have performance standards these are different from technology standards whereas technology standards the government mandates you use a particular kind of technology in a performance standard the government mandates that you meet a particular threshold of performance and so examples of that are in the national ambient air quality standards of the clean air act the government sets limits on particulate matter 2.5 remember these are particulates in the air 2.5 microns in diameter and they're particularly dangerous because they they lodge deep into your lung tissue and they can even cross into the bloodstream and they can even cross the placental barrier um from a pregnant mother to an unborn child so if you've got pollutants that are 2.5 microns and smaller those can be particularly harmful and the government set standards on those usually parts per million in the air or parts per billion for the concentration of pm 2.5 they also set performance standards for something like ground level ozone that comes out of vehicle tailpipes and so for those performance standards remember that they set uh regional attainment levels and if the region doesn't achieve its attainment level then they have to write a state implementation plan to explain to the federal government how they're going to work to progress towards that performance standard and meet that target in the future another example of a performance standard is in the paris agreement remember that the paris agreement promulgated by the united nations and all the signatory countries in the united nations framework convention on climate change that have signed on to that agreement have agreed to try to limit global warming temperature change to 1.5 degrees celsius at the minimum and to hopefully achieve a less than 2 or 2.5 degree celsius change so that's a performance standard because we're not mandating explicitly how countries work to achieve that goal but on the whole we want the planet through this international agreement to all behave in a way that will meet this standard so we're trying to achieve this level of performance relative to global temperature change and another example of a performance standard is in the clean power plan remember that's barack obama's plan to reduce carbon emissions to address climate change through section 111d of the clean air act so the clean power plan it never became law obama's administration through the epa um wrote the rule and it was then held up in court obama then left office donald trump took over and uh donald trump decided that he was no longer going to defend the policy in court which essentially eliminated the policy and so then donald trump is required to come up with a new policy to address carbon emissions but the the performance standard of the clean power plan is to try to reduce greenhouse gases to five percent below 1990 levels i think by 2030 is the the promise there so we want the country to try to achieve this goal x percentage of reduction below 1990 levels by a certain time period so we're trying to perform in a certain way the policy itself doesn't explain how we're going to do that um it gives some guidance to the states about coal-fired power plants and methane but essentially the the policy is to achieve this goal by a certain time next we have talked about some economic based policies these are policies that use principles of the free market of supply and demand taxation so they're financially based policies that use financial incentives to get people to behave in a way that reduces their environmental footprint or financial penalties you have to pay if your environmental footprint is you know over the the desired threshold of the government so what that looks like relative to supply and demand is that i've got a little graph here right with supply increasing across the x-axis demand increasing on the y-axis and also cost is increasing along the y-axis so supply is our independent variable here as the supply of something increases demand for that product should decrease as the supply increases and demand decreases the cost also will decrease so if we think about something like a cap and trade program like the cap and trade program to address acid rain in the clean air act so we have permits for nitrous oxide nitrous oxides and sulfur oxides that create that acid rain right remember that those pollutants are often emitted in the midwest midwestern states in the united states they blow across the country to the east coast where they precipitate out as acid rain over the adirondacks in other parts of the east coast and the appalachians um and so what that means is that we give permits for a certain amount of pollution but you have to pay for those permits or the coal-fired power plants that release releases pollutants have to pay for them and we reduce the number of permits over time so as the supply of those permits decreases the demand for them should increase fewer permits are available so some of those coal-fired power plants are not going to get the permits they need and the price of those permits is also going to increase what that means is that those coal-fired power plants or those other factories are not going to want to pay that cost and so they're going to convert their facilities to be um to emit fewer pollutants and reduce their contribution to acid rain over time another example of an economic policy is the carbon fee and dividend policy this is the policy that's being promoted by the citizens climate lobby this one places a tax on carbon that uh industrial facilities would have to pay and that tax slowly increases so as they have to pay more for the carbon that they emit they're going to increase their pro-environmental behavior which means that they will install new technology in the facilities to reduce their um emissions of carbon dioxide or methane or whatever greenhouse gas it is that they are polluting or we might eliminate some facilities but as the tax increases uh it's a financial penal penalty that encourages pro-environmental change remember the carbon fee and dividend program places a fee on carbon and as that fee accrues the government holds on to it and then once a year they pay a dividend to every citizen of the united states so we all get a little share and we're supposed to then use that dividend to cover increasing fuel costs at the household level so if the cost of gasoline rises or the cost of heating fuel it rises or electricity arises as a result of the carbon fee and dividend policy we would have the money in our pockets to help pay for that and the last policy instrument that we will talk about is the information-based policy these policies require folks who are industries or people who are doing something on the landscape that might have an environmental impact to list and describe those environmental impacts so if you are complying with the national environmental policy act nepa or in new york state the state environmental quality review act seeker then you have to document all of your impacts to the environment that includes impacts to air water land it includes impacts to visual resources like viewscapes and buildings noise pollution water pollution or soil contamination erosion control so you have to document all of your environmental impacts the idea then is that once those impacts are documented that it will help you make a decision that will reduce your environmental impact the assumption here is that industrial facilities corporations private landowners don't want to harm the environment don't want to have a big impact but simply don't know a way to reduce their environmental impact but by documenting the impact it will help reveal some ways that we might reduce environmental degradation so those are information-based policies the policies themselves once you document your impacts the policies don't actually require that you take steps to reduce avoid or eliminate them the assumption is that most people will do that voluntarily the policies are simply designed to reveal hidden environmental impacts that we can't always see