Laws help reduce pollution and do not affect competitiveness, study finds
Friday, December 6, 2019
The United Nations Climate Change (COP25) World Climate Summit, which starts today in Madrid, is the latest initiative by world governments to seek agreement on legal frameworks to help protect the planet. However, there are still many critical voices that question the effectiveness of laws in reducing pollution. Opponents of regulation claim that laws can lead to systems that are too rigid and unable to adapt to technological changes. Others believe that firms will find ways to bypass legal controls and that, therefore, laws do not achieve significant progress. However, this review of research on the subject points to a scenario that is, in fact, much more favorable toward the potential of environmental regulation.