Climate Change and Human Response to Sustainable Environmental Governance Policy: Tax or Emissions Trading?

Qinglong Wang, Jiale Huang, Xian Zhang, Weina Qin, Huina Zhang and Yani Dong
Additional contact information
Qinglong Wang: School of Marxism, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610057, China
Jiale Huang: School of Business, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610057, China
Xian Zhang: School of Marxism, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China
Weina Qin: School of Marxism, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Huina Zhang: Department of Cyber Economics and Management, Tellhow Animation College, Nanchang 330200, China
Yani Dong: China Telecom Corporation Lanzhou Branch, Lanzhou 730000, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 15, 1-13

Abstract: With climate change, humans are looking for effective ways to improve the ecological environment and provide comfortable survival space for sustainable development. There are two main economic methods for controlling environmental pollution: emissions fees (Pigouvian taxes) and emissions standards (emissions trading). However, the two policies have their applicable conditions in dealing with different sources of pollution and dynamic ecosystems, and many problems will arise if they are misused. This paper theoretically proves that significant (minor) pollution sources could satisfy the condition that the benefit function’s curvature is greater (less) than that of the cost function. When the speed of ecological absorption is constant, a price policy controlling significant pollution sources will generate uncertainty; the quantity policy will generate a higher total social cost of managing the minor pollution source. When the speed of ecological absorption is not constant, adjusting the number of part pollution permits will lead to two kinds of pollutant leakage. If the pollution permits can be freely circulated, it will lead to the pollution of regional b (less regulated areas) inflow into the region a (more regulated areas); if permits are not freely circulated, otherwise not.

Keywords: climate change; human response; environmental governance policy; Pigou tax; emissions trading (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/15/9412/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/15/9412/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:15:p:9412-:d:877648

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().