Carbon Sequestration

Only in America.

Most other places standards are based on absolute levels, not percentage removals. Thou shalt not exceed #### ppm.

 

Hate to break it to you, but this is actually passing a regulation. It's basically taxing companies for their discharges, although it won't have been couched in terms of tax law.

 

Have I mentioned that my day job is environmental law enforcement (my co-workers are a former lawyer and a former police officer)?

Addendum: The definition I'm using is the one from the dictionary, where government regulation is the act of regulating or a principle, rule, or law designed to control or govern conduct.

That's one form it can take.

Over here the Resource Management Act (1991) effectively states (among other things) that all discharges to land, air, or water are a breach of the act unless permitted by a resource consent or a rule in a relevant plan. This gives the Regional Councils (the level I work at) the power to set science based limits taking local factors into account.

Not strictly true. Many laws set a maximum fine. The way it usually works is the defense lawyer and the lawyer acting for the informant argue over starting points for the fine, mitigating factors which offer discounts to the starting point, and exacerbating factors which make the fine worse, then makes his decision considering these things along with government intent and precendents set through case law.

That's one thing that regulation does. But tell me. What do you think would happen if a company had dumped chemicals in the Rhine without paying the fee?

A government does not just start charging people for some thing without first passing a law enabling them to do so. Passing a law that requires people to pay to do a thing is regulating that thing.

Again. Think about your definition, and think about what would happen if a company dumped in the rhine and did not pay the fee for doing so.

Addendum: While you're at it, you may want to look into the International COmmission for the Protection of the Rhine - a regulatory authority setup by the member nations of the European Union to protect the rhine after a chemical factory fire in... I think it was 1985.

 

Ordinarily I'd be inclined to agree with you, however, I'm 90% certain I have heard similar situations described elsewhere, and I have encountered similar inflexibility towards standards even within my job. Having said that, it's generally a problem with individuals, rather than an organizational problem.

 

So, for you reluation regulates behaviour and the objective was to stop people from dumping into the rhine (IE: Regulate their behaviour).
You agree that dumping without paying the fee would land you in jail would land you in jail, and yet you think this is not the same thing as making it illegal, and therefore it is not regulation. Even though a government can not do this without passing some form of regulation.

Unfortunately, I have been completely unable to verify this claim of yours, I haven't been able to find any information about it. You haven't provided any information to support your opinion, which has effectively shut down the conversation.

The only thing I can really think of to suggest is to look a little more closely at what regulation actually means, the different regulatory tools that governments have available to them, and how it all relates back to this discussion. Also consider that your definition of what constitutes regulation is very sensitive to the wording of the law in question, which you have not provided for us and I have not been able to find for myself.

For example, I might speculate that the framework around this scenario is that the government effectively makes available licenses to dump a quantity of a specific contaminant into the Rhine, then rules unlicensed dumping of material into the Rhine illegal. That's still regulation by your definition where x is licensed dumping, Y is unlicensed dumping, the only difference is the criteria for a legal activity. I also imagine there is probably a total annual cap as to how many kg of specific materials can be dumped, but again, I have been unable to find any information on this.

The difference between our definitions of regulation is that I'm saying that any time the government uses the law to control the behaviour of individual or corporations, that is regulation and that this is an example of that.

 

In a sense, maybe, in another sense, I'm not so sure. The fine itself isn't the regulation. The fine is a consequence of the regulation. The regulation is the law which defines what is legal, what is not, and sets out the consequences.

Consider driving as an example. I would argue that driving is regulated. I've looked into the situation in my jurisdiction, and every road rule is set out by an clause in a parlimentary act (although it calls itself a special rule). I can point you to the section of the act that tells you to keep left, for example. Now, I'll be the first to admit, I'm not well versed in American law, or German law, for that matter, but, the examples I have looked at have followed the same general format. They seek to regulate peoples behaviour by putting in place guidelines what can and can not be done, and specifying the consequences of failure to comply with that act.

My core point is that governments don't just get to impose charges and consequences for existing activities without first passing a law to enable them to do so, but the passage of a law to control behaviour is, by definition regulation. There's just, seemingly, a disconnect between that idea, and what most people think of as regulation which are the more perscriptive laws such as "You shall not discharge more than 1ppm of ammoniacal nitrogen according to APHS standard methods."

Thanks :*)

Even here, there's a distinction to be made between whether or not something is regulated, and how successfully it is regulated. For example, as I understanding, jaywalking is something that is illegal in the US, and is something that potentially carries a fine. By definition, it's regulated. However, many laws also give enforcement officers a degree of discretion when it comes to enforcement of that regulation. Breaking the speedlimit by 5kph might not carry a fine on a freeway, but, doing so driving past a school is likely to get you pulled over. Why? Because of factors like public interest and because your more likely to hurt someone speeding past a school than you are speeding on a freeway.

So while you might not get punished for jaywalking in the US even though there's a law on the matter (it's regulated), the only thing that neccessarily indicates is that it doesn't often, in the opinion of an enforcement officer, meet some criteria for persuing. On the other hand, if you're jaywalking, and you get hit by a car, that might be something that your insurance company, the drivers insurance company, and the judge prosecuting the driver all might take into consideration. While the driver should have been driving according to conditions, and should have been able to stop, you should not have been crossing there in the first place.

You might be surprised. Even in the time I have been in my current job, I have encountered some interesting attitudes of entitlement when it comes to disposing of waste of various forms in fresh water.

Quite. Industry has had a free range, and in return they've given us the likes of Bhopal and fish kills on 100km stretches of the Rhine. I'm a contradiction in this regard, in that I see environmental regulation as a neccessary evil. I'd much rather do without it. I'd much rather wake up tomorrow morning and find myself redundant because there's been a massive change in attitude. However, we're where we are now because non reggulation has been shown not to work.

It's not too dissimilar here. Take the RMA which I mentioned earlier.
The RMA says "All discharges, including the discharge of water to water, are considered a breach of this act, except were statutory defenses apply, or a relevant rule or consent exists".
The regional councils are then free to manage their resources as they see fit, taking into account regional factors. For example, there's one area we're they're having some pretty bad problems with nitrogen loading in ground and surface waters, so, because they're free to, they've taken the approach of managing septic tank nitrogen discharges through their plans. Likewise, the region I am in faces some pretty unique issues around water right allocations and water usage. But when we infringe them, the infringement is for breaching the appropriate section of the RMA. The RMA is the regulatory framework which the regional councils use to manage and regulate resource usages.

Truth be told, I have come to the same conclusion. Fortunately, I at least get some input in the regional rules. A report I have just recently finished writing (somewhere around 30 pages, including graphs and tables, with something like 50 pages worth of maps) is going to be used to 'inform' some of the next set of rules, and even though it hasn't been officially released yet, I've had people from other regional councils enquiring after my methodology, and the policy department is already considering my input (and really want to see my report). I may not be writing them, but my fingerprint is going to be all through them.

 

peo·ple
noun \ˈpē-pəl\
plural people
Definition of PEOPLE
1 plural : human beings making up a group or assembly or linked by a common interest

be·hav·ior
noun \bi-ˈhā-vyər, bē-\
Definition of BEHAVIOR
1 a : the manner of conducting oneself

Both from Merriam-Webster. The action of operating a factory is a behaviour. The action of dumping waste generated by that factory into the rhine is behaviour.
A corporation in most jurisdictions is a legal person. More than that, the owners and operators of the factory are people linked by a common interest.
The objective was to reduce pollution in the rhine.
The pollution was being caused by discharges from factories (among other sources).
Operating a factory is a behaviour, discharging waste to the Rhine is a behaviour, factories are operated by people, stopping the pollution then neccessarily requires controling peoples behaviour.

The point that this analysis misses is that before the law was introduced, there was a third option that is no longer legally available to them. Dumping in the rhine for free. The government has removed that option from people, therefore the government has regulated their behaviour.

This is a poor example, in fact, I'd go as far as calling it a red herring.

Disposing of waste is neccessary for the continued operation of a factory, going to a theater is not neccessary to my continued function. I have a third option available to me, not attending the theater, factories also have a third option available to them, not dumping in the rhine. The difference is that I don't need to go and find something equally expensive to do, whereas the factories must find some alternative method to dispose of their waste if they decide to not pay the governments fee (effectively a surcharge).

On top of that, as Billvon said...

 

To illuminate my point further.

Focussing on the charge itself is a distraction, it's a red herring.

It's not the charge itself that creates the regulation, that is never what I have said, nor was that ever my point.

In order for the government to make the charge, there must first be a law, that law will have attached to it a fee schedule which lays out the fees on a per kg basis. That same law will make it an offense to violate that law (by discharging without paying the fee), and sets out the consequences of breaching that law.

I am saying that any time a government passes a law, the passage of that law is regulation. In this specific instance, the charge (effectively a surcharge) is a regulatory tool.