The pitfalls of environmental policy making

摘要

A few months ago I wrote an item entitled Is the biofuel band-wagon running out of energy. It opened by stating that the wheels seemed to be coming off the wagon. Well, things have accelerated since then, and using the same strained metaphor, the biofuels wagon has been instructed to stop whilst it's subject to a complete scrutiny of its road worthiness. The conclusion of Gordon Brown's food summit on 22 April was that, The UK's support of biofuel production will be carefully examined in light of its impact on worldwide food production' and, 'If our UK review shows that we need to change our approach, we will also push for change in EU biofuels targets.' I like to believe this justifies the conclusion of my article which was that '...the biofuels farrago shows that environmental policy is harder than you think.' The underlying reason for this is that, whilst it is relatively easy to quantify the environmental impacts of current practices, it is extremely difficult to assess the relative merits of any policy options designed to address those impacts.