环境与经济全球化.doc

环境与经济全球化外文翻译 The Environment and Economic Globalization Material Source: Globalization: What’s NewAuthor: Frankel Regulation It will help if we clarify one more fundamental set of issues before we turn to the main subject of the chapter, the role of globalization per se. It is logical to expect environmental regulation to cost something, to have a negative effect on measured productivity and income per capita. “There is no free lunch,” Milton Friedman famously said. Most tangible good things in life cost something, and for many kinds of regulation, if effective, people will readily agree that the cost is worth paying. Cost-benefit tests and cost-minimization strategies are economists’ tools for trying to make sure that policies deliver the best environment for a given economic cost, or the lowest economic cost for a given environmental goal.[Taxes on energy, for example, particularly on hydrocarbon fuels, are quite an efficient mode of environmental regulation if the revenue is “recycled” efficiently, while CAFéstandards are somewhat less efficient differentiated CAFé standards, for example,encouraged the birth of the SUV craze, and crude “command and control” methods are less efficient still e.g., government mandates regarding what specific technologies firms must use.] Some environmental regulations, when legislated or implemented poorly,can impose very large and unnecessary economic costs on firms, and workers, and consumers. Occasionally there are policy measures that have both environmental and economic benefits. Usually these “win-win” ideas constitute the elimination of some previously existing distortion in public policy. Many countries have historically subsidized the use of coal. The United States subsidizes mining and cattle grazing on federal land, and sometimes logging and oil drilling as well, not to mention water use.Other countries have substantial subsidies for ocean fishing. Elimination of such subsidies would improve the envi