Each certificate allows the owner to emit one ton of the noxious gas. But the students at Glens Falls Middle School are going to sit on theirs. The way the EPA program works, that means the nation's air will be that much cleaner. Cheap Alternative President Clinton hopes to sell a version of the trading program to other nations meeting in Kyoto, Japan, in December to conclude a treaty that curbs global warming. Though some environmentalists don't like this approach, and government agencies are finding it hard to explain the complex system to local citizens, business-people are warming to it.
Trading appears to be a cheap way to help curb pollution.
After years of hand-wringing, acid rain is being reduced by a market that lets individual companies make their own antipollution strategies. That's money going up the stacks. In some programs it doesn't necessarily have to be their emissions. But the program has been extremely difficult to sell to residents of Wilmington, an unincorporated area near Los Angeles Harbor where homes and schools sit next door to several refineries. A local activist group, Communities for a Better Environment, is suing the refineries, the state and the Air Quality District in Federal District Court in Los Angeles, charging that the trading program violates the civil rights of residents of the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood.