As you have read in this chapter, since the mid-1980s the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States has seemingly come to increasingly rely on transferable emissions control (TEC) as an instrument to regulate pollution.

(a) Do you support this fundamental shift in policy from the traditional ‘command-and-control’ regulation regime to the market-based trading of pollution allowances? Explain.

(b) Why do you think the rest of the world has been somewhat slow, or not as enthusiastic, in adopting this type of pollution-control policy instrument as the US? For example, it was at the insistence of the US that the rest of the world reluctantly agreed to incorporate emissions trading as part of the Kyoto accord on climate change. Speculate.