The Ultimate End of Pipe Solution?

The term “end-of-pipe solution” describes a pollution-control approach that cleans up contaminated flows of water or air at the point where that effluent enters the environment. This can be contrasted with the (often less costly) route of preventing contamination in the first place. Many of the approaches you’ll find in

EBN rely on this latter strategy of solving problems before they get into the pipe. Such solutions tend to be more elegant and cost-effective—but also harder to dictate or regulate than control technologies for the end of the pipe. Stormwater provides a good example of this approach. This issue’s feature article, “Cleaning Up Stormwater,” addresses both types of solutions: source control (avoiding stormwater runoff and keeping pollutants out of the runoff) and treatment (removing pollutants from the stormwater flows).

Now we find out that there’s another solution to pollution that’s neither before the pipe nor at the end. In fact, it doesn’t deal with the pipe at all. Instead, it wipes away the pipe’s effect with the stroke of a pen. On page 5, you’ll see that the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics claim no net air pollution emissions. Did we invest in solar housing for athletes, like the Australians? No. Have we developed superefficient transportation systems and facilities that don’t pollute? No again. We simply accepted the generosity of donated emission credits from DuPont and other companies—for which they’ll get a tax deduction—to wipe out the Olympics’ air pollution emissions. In keeping with President Bush’s position that “the American way of life is not open for negotiation,” I suppose it’s nice to have such low-stress ways of solving our emissions problems. But in the absence of any firm emission reduction agreements that would cap our total emissions—which the Bush Administration has blocked—one has to ask how real this solution is.

Conservative economists have argued that committing to firm CO₂ emission reductions as called for in the Kyoto Agreement would be bad for our economy. It turns out that, at least in one respect, they’re right. If the U.S. were pushing to reduce our national emissions, we would lose the income that the more efficient American companies are now getting by selling their emission credits to European companies that need those credits to meet their own commitments!

– Nadav Malin