Better health is one benefit of a cleaner environment, showing up as fewer illnesses and longer lives for people who breathe cleaner air and drink cleaner water.
Missing Word
health
Polluted air and water cause illness and shorten lives, so cutting pollution improves health. Economists count this gain, along with higher property values, gains for industries such as farming and tourism, and the enjoyment of a cleaner environment, when they weigh the benefits of environmental rules.
Category: Benefits and Costs
Question 2
The full variety of plant and animal genetic material on Earth, which no single nation can protect worldwide on its own, is called biodiversity.
Missing Word
biodiversity
Biodiversity is the range of living species and their genetic material. Because species and habitats cross borders, protecting it worldwide requires international cooperation.
Category: Global Issues and Tradeoffs
Question 3
Under U.S. law, a species is listed as endangered when it faces a serious risk of extinction, and the listing can restrict how landowners use the places where it lives.
Missing Word
extinction
Extinction is the permanent disappearance of every member of a species. Listing a species as endangered protects it, but because many listed species live on private land, the restrictions can also give some landowners an incentive to keep the species from being found on their property.
Category: Market-Oriented Tools
Question 4
In a famous example, the economist Ronald Coase described sparks from a railroad's locomotives setting fire to a farmer's field, to show why clearly defined property rights matter.
Missing Word
Coase
Ronald Coase argued that once the law makes clear who is responsible, the parties can work out the least costly way to deal with the harm.
Category: Market-Oriented Tools
Question 5
Oil refineries once bought and sold permits to emit lead, a toxic metal that used to be added to gasoline.
Missing Word
lead
Lead is a toxic heavy metal. Because a limited number of refineries had a strong interest in trading, permits worked well for reducing it.
Category: Market-Oriented Tools
Question 6
Adopted in 2015, the Paris Agreement asks each participating country to set its own targets for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Missing Word
Paris
The Paris Agreement grew out of talks aimed at an accord covering all countries, since no nation acting alone can solve global warming.
Category: Global Issues and Tradeoffs
Question 7
Economists agree that a society trading off economic output against environmental protection should avoid points inside the production possibility frontier, since only points on the frontier achieve efficiency.
Missing Word
efficiency
Efficiency here means getting the most of one goal for a given amount of the other. A point inside the frontier wastes resources, because the society could have more output, more protection, or both. Economics cannot say which point on the frontier is best, since that depends on how a society values each goal.
Category: Global Issues and Tradeoffs
Question 8
Instead of handing out pollution permits for free, a government can sell them to the highest bidders at an auction, which also raises public revenue.
Missing Word
auction
In an auction, buyers bid against one another and each item goes to whoever bids the most. A marketable permit program can give its permits away or sell them; selling them puts a price on pollution from the start and brings in money for the government. Either way, the number of permits sets the total amount of pollution allowed.
Category: Market-Oriented Tools
Question 9
Created in 1970, the EPA is the federal agency that oversees U.S. environmental laws.
Missing Word
EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency, known as the EPA, writes and enforces rules under laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
Category: Command-and-Control Rules
Question 10
Command-and-control rules are open to political pressure, and existing firms often use lobbying, direct appeals to lawmakers and regulators, to win exemptions for themselves.
Missing Word
lobbying
Lobbying is the effort to influence officials' decisions. Because rules are written through a political process, firms can lobby to soften the rules that apply to them.
Category: Command-and-Control Rules
Question 11
Many of the tradable sulfur dioxide permits created by the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments went to power plants that burn coal, a fossil fuel mined as a solid rock.
Missing Word
coal
Coal is a solid fossil fuel, and burning it releases sulfur dioxide, a major cause of acid rain. That is why coal-burning plants were central to the permit program.
Category: Market-Oriented Tools
Question 12
Gaps in the wording of a law that let some firms escape its rules are called loopholes.
Missing Word
loopholes
Loopholes often result from political compromise, and they allow some polluters to avoid limits that others must meet.
Category: Command-and-Control Rules
Question 13
Cleaner rivers and oceans benefit people who earn a living by fishing, because less polluted water supports larger catches.
Missing Word
fishing
Some industries depend directly on clean natural resources. Pollution can kill fish or make them unsafe to eat, so reducing water pollution raises the catch and income of people who fish for a living. This is one of the benefits of environmental protection that can be measured in dollars.
Category: Benefits and Costs
Question 14
When strict land-use limits begin automatically once an endangered species is found, some landowners destroy habitat, the natural home a species needs to survive, so the species never settles there.
Missing Word
habitat
Habitat is the environment where a species lives and finds food and shelter. Rules that punish owners for having endangered species can give them a reason to destroy it.
Category: Market-Oriented Tools
Question 15
Pay-as-you-throw programs charge households for each bag of trash but collect materials for recycling at little or no cost.
Missing Word
recycling
Recycling turns used materials into new products. Charging for trash while keeping the recycling option cheap gives households an incentive to throw away less.
Category: Market-Oriented Tools