Do US air pollution offset markets disproportionately relocate pollution to or from low-income or minority communities? Concerns about an equal distribution of environmental quality across communities--environmental justice--have growing policy influence. We relate prices and quantities of offset transactions to the demographics of the communities surrounding polluting plants. We find little association of offset prices or offset-induced movements in pollution with the share of a community that is Black or Hispanic or with mean household income. This analysis of 12 prominent offset markets suggests that they do not substantially increase or decrease the equity of environmental outcomes.
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Aligning agri-environmental subsidies and environmental needs: a comparative analysis between the US and EU
- Award ID(s):
- 1828910
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10284559
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 1748-9326
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 054067
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Summary The landmark report (Herbst
et al . 1971) linking prenatal treatment with a synthetic estrogen, diethylstilbestrol (DES ), to cancer at puberty in women whose mothers took the drug while pregnant ushered in an era of research on delayed effects of such exposures on functional outcomes in offspring. An animal model developed in our laboratory at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences confirmed thatDES was the carcinogen and exposure toDES caused, as well, functional alterations in the reproductive, endocrine, and immune systems of male and female mice treated in utero.DES was also being used in agriculture and we discovered, at the first meeting onEstrogens in the Environment in 1979 (Estrogens in the Environment, 1980), that many environmental contaminants were also estrogenic. Many laboratories sought to discern the basis for estrogenicity in environmental chemicals and to discover other hormonally active xenobiotics. Our laboratory elucidated howDES and other estrogenic compounds worked by altering differentiation through epigenetic gene imprinting, helping explain the transgenerational effects found in mice and humans. At theWingspread Conference on the Human‐Wildlife Connection in 1991 (Advances in Modern Environmental Toxicology, 1992), we learned that environmental disruption of the endocrine system occurred in many species and phyla, and the term endocrine disruption was introduced. Further findings of transgenerational effects of environmental agents that mimicked or blocked various reproductive hormones and the ubiquity of environmental signals, such as bisphenol A increased concern for human and ecological health. Scientists began to look at other endocrine system aspects, such as cardiovascular and immune function, and other nuclear receptors, with important observations regarding obesity and metabolism. Laboratories, such as ours, are now using stem cells to try to understand the mechanisms by which various environmental signals alter cell differentiation. Since 2010, research has shown that trauma and other behavioral inputs can function as ‘environmental signals,’ can be encoded in gene regulation networks in a variety of cells and organs, and can be passed on to subsequent generations. So now we come full circle: environmental chemicals mimic hormones or other metabolic signaling molecules and now behavioral experience can be transduced into chemical signals that also modify gene expression. -
null (Ed.)Global agriculture consumes substantial resources and produces significant pollution. By shifting its production to new locations, and inducing changes in technology and input use, trade has a substantial impact on environmental sustainability of the world's food systems, but due to suboptimal environmental policy, the exact nature of these impacts is in dispute. We review the literature on agricultural trade and environmental sustainability, highlighting the different approaches taken in ecology versus economics. While useful in identifying environmental costs, much of the ecological literature does not compare these costs to a trade-free counterfactual and can therefore be misleading. Further, by moving production to places with more resources and increasing production efficiency, trade can reduce the environmental impact of food production. On the other hand, trade can also limit the effectiveness of domestic environmental policy because production can be shifted to countries with less stringent regulations. However, recently, consumers are leveraging trade policy to induce exporters to improve environmental sustainability. While such policies are gaining traction in wealthy countries, evidence suggests that such measures will not reach their potential without buy-in from decision makers in the countries where the environmental damages are occurring. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Volume 13 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abfa4e
