Acid Rain In Europe and North America: U.S. Lags In Commitment to Control

Gregory Wetstone

On March 24, 1983 the Environmental Law Institute held a press conference announcing the release of ACID RAIN IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA: NATIONAL RESPONSES TO AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM, authored by Gregory Wetstone and Armin Rosencranz. Mr. Wetstone prepared this summary of the major findings of the book for ELR Dialogue, based on his press conference remarks.

— The Editors

[13 ELR 10096]

While the U.S. has retreated from its historic leadership position in national and international air pollution control in the past two years, other Western countries have been moving in the opposite direction. In West Germany, Sweden, Norway, Caanda, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark, air pollution is now taken far more seriously than ever before. New concern over the impacts of acid rain is the reason.

In the past several years, reports of severe acidification impacts have propelled acid rain from a relatively obscure concern — regarded as serious by a narrow group of specialized scientists — to one of the most prominent environmental problems of our time. Of Sweden's 85,000 lakes, 18,000 have been acidified. Fish populations have been eliminated in more than half of the lakes of southern Norway. Hundreds of Caandian and U.S. lakes and a number of Nova Scotia's most important salmon rivers are suffering the effects of acidification. And scientists, relying on data describing the amount of alkalinity remaining in healthy lakes, project that continued pollution at current levels will result in the acidification of thousands more lakes in Europe and North America by the end of the century.

To many countries which do not have large lack areas to be concerned with, it is not the aquatic impacts but the recent reports of severe forest damages associated with sulfur pollution and acid rain that are most disturbing. In West Germany, a government report released last fall concludes that fully 560,000 hectares, or 7.8 percent of Germany's forest area, are suffering air pollution damage. In Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland, the geographic scope and severity of injury to forests is reported to be far more serious.

The international community has taken notice of the growing evidence that acid rain is causing widespread problems. The three leading Western multinational organizations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) and the European Economic Community have all officially recognized the severity of the acidification problem and recommended immediate adoption of large-scale programs to reduce SO₂ emissions.

The countries most affected are already changing their energy and pollution control policies. Seeking to protect its ecosystems, Sweden has reduced SO₂ emissions by more than 40 percent over the past decade. In Norway, where hydroelectric power supplies most of the nation's electricity needs, emissions are already among the lowest in Europe. Caanda's biggest polluter, the provincially-owned utility company Ontario Hydro, has embarked on a program to reduce total emissions from all its plants by 40 percent before 1990 and the massive INCO smelter at Sudbury, Ontario (the largest single SO₂ pollution source in the Western world) has been required to reduce SO₂ emissions to 33 percent of 1970 levels.

The most dramatic change in government environmental policy has occurred in West Germany. Until recently, West German officials were sanguine about the nation's moderately strict pollution control policies and skeptical of Scandinavia's campaign to reduce international pollution and acid rain. But concern over forest damages has prompted the inauguration of strict new control requirements on both the state and federal level. New federal regulations, scheduled for formal promulgation in the spring of 1983, will require abatement action to reduce aggregate SO₂ emissions by one-third by 1995. And in the industrialized state of North Rhine-West-phalia, 16 of the largest lignite-burning power plants have agreed to an emission reduction effort expected to reduce aggregate SO₂ emissions by 15 percent by 1987.

In other nations where air pollution control has historically not been a high priority, the last year or two has seen a greater importance attached to national and international pollution control policies. Greece, in a desperate effort to save its cultural heritage from destruction by acid rain and other similarly corrosive forms of pollution, has placed unprecedented restrictions on the use of automobiles in Athens, and forced several major industrial facilities to cease operations during summer months. Switzerland, concerned about possible acid rain-related damages in its forests, has imposed strict new automobile emission control requirements despite objections from those concerned about international automobile trade. In the Netherlands, major SO₂ emitters must now pay a charge based on the sulfur content of fuels, and new power plants, including two already under construction, must be equipped with flue gas scrubbers.

But the problem is international in scope. New control programs in these countries, even very stringent ones, cannot in themselves effectively solve their problems. In Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Eastern Caanda and the Netherlands, more than 60 percent of the sulfur deposition originates in other nations. Even in heavily industrialized [13 ELR 10097] West Germany, roughly half of the sulfur deposition comes from foreign pollution sources.

Affected countries have utilized every means at their disposal to encourage emission reductions from major pollution producing nations upwind. In the face of practical constraints that would lead less hearty proponents to despair, the Swedes and Norwegians — the first to truly feel the harmful effects of transboundary acid rain — have for the past decade orchestrated a patient but determined international campaign. They have sought to make other nations more cognizant of international pollution problems and the need for an international pollution abatement program. In many impacted nations the domestic pollution control efforts are, in fact, a strategy geared as much to enhance international credibility as to directly produce environmental benefits.

Caanda, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands and, most recently, West Germany have now joined the Scandinavian cause. Caanda has solicited greater pollution control in the U.S. through preliminary air quality agreements, joint research efforts and formal negotiations. West Germany is presently seeking tough new control requirements to apply to all major SO₂ emission sources in the European Community.

In their search for international action, concerned nations have looked mainly to negotiations and technical studies conducted through key international organizations such as the OECD, the European Economic Community and ECE, a group established under the auspices of the United Nations. In the roughly ten years of concerted international activity in this area, the leadership role has been passed among these organizations and each has contributed substantially toward the hopeful evolution of a structure to make international environmental responsibility a reality.

These organizations have pushed the acid rain issue along while national action, for the most part, has lagged behind the spirit and often the letter of multilateral pronouncements. OECD, based in Paris, provided an early forum for discussion and study, first documenting in a 1977 report the magnitude of transboundary pollution flow in Europe. But OECD recommendations for major SO₂ emission reductions in member countries were largely ignored.

As the focus of the first international agreement to "endeavor" to reduce pollution levels, the Geneva-based ECE assumed international leadership on this issue in 1979. The 1979 ECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, boasting 31 signatory nations from Eastern and Western Europe and North America, does not require abatement action, but it serves several important purposes: improving international scientific efforts, enhancing official recognition of the problem, and bringing home to Eastern Europe the importance of international pollution, as OECD already had for the West.

The most promise for international action may currently rest with the Brussels-based European Economic Community whose membership is comprised of the Common Market nations of Western Europe. The Community has issued directives governing air pollution policies in Western Europe since 1970, and is the single organization with authority to establish binding multilateral pollution control requirements. Late last year the Community Commission which sets the agenda for the organization's environmental activities, identified tougher air pollution controls to reduce acid rain and transboundary pollution as a major Community priority.

But major emitting nations not experiencing serious impacts tend to question the need for and practicality of pollution abatement. In fact, despite new evidence attesting to the severity of transboundary pollution problems, such countries continue to make energy policy, pollution control, land use and other pertinent decisions without explicit recognition or consideration of foreign environmental impacts.

Great Britain, Europe's most upwind country and the largest SO₂ emitter in Western Europe, denies responsibility for pollution problems in downwind countries and is unreceptive to suggestions that it undertake costly new control programs. Britain intends to rely on its substantial coal reserves, which provide 70 percent of the nation's electrical power, for the indefinite future. Tall smokestacks, which promote the international transport of emissions, are scheduled to remain the central SO₂ control strategy. However, Britain has recently indicated that it will take transboundary pollution concerns into account in the future development of energy and pollution control policies.

The United States, alone among the major Western nations, not only opposes new control programs but has adopted new policies over the past two years promoting increased SO₂ emissions. Under the Reagan Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved state emissions control relaxations allowing sources to release more than one million additional tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere annually. EPA has also established policies governing control of interstate pollution and regulation of smokestack height which nearly eliminate the chance for greater control of transported pollutants through these provisions. They have virtually abandoned efforts to address the acid deposition problem through the international air pollution section of the Clean Air Act.

These actions are inconsistent with both the spirit and the letter of the commitment to reduce transboundary pollution as much as possible under existing authority in the 1980 U.S.-Caanda Memorandum of Intent (MOI). The U.S. EPA has, in fact, formally ruled that international impacts need not be considered in the relaxation of emission limitations for existing sources.

Additionally, the U.S. has worked to undermine the crucial MOI joint scientific efforts, withdrawing support for one of the most important work group tasks, the joint investigation of emission control strategies. The Administration has also demanded that jointly produced work group reports be unilaterally reviewed by a scientific committee established under the auspicies of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The joint research effort was intended to avoid exactly the sort of competing science which might be expected to result from the movement towards separathe national scientific assessments.

Nor has the greater awareness of long-range air pollution and its impacts substantially changed the energy or environmental policies of Eastern European nations. The [13 ELR 10098] limited data available suggests that aggregate SO₂ emissions in eastern Europe are extremely high. Pollution levels in East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia may already be great enough to present serious health risks and cause widespread materials damage, among other problems. As mentioned earlier, large areas of high altitude forestsare already experiencing devastating pollution-related damages.

Not surprisingly, Eastern Europe's emissions are believed to contribute significantly to Western Europe's pollution problems. Despite the mainly eastward flow of the prevailing winds, the massive volume of emissions from this region often spills over to the north and west, substantially increasing pollution levels in Austria, West Germany and Scandinavia. The USSR and Eastern bloc countries are parties to the 1979 ECE Convention on Transboundary Air Pollution. But given the inattention to air pollution control in the past in these countries — even where local impacts are substantial — it is doubtful that Soviet bloc nations would be willing to participate in any international program establishing concrete emission abatement requirements.

The unwillingness of major pollution exporting nations to respond to increasing evidence documenting acidification damages has contributed to a charged international atmosphere in which impacted nations, and other countries viewing themselves as similarly vulnerable, regard transboundary pollution with unprecedented apprehension.

Victim nations afflicted by their neighbors' pollution can do little to halt the assault. Avenues of recourse theoretically available to Western nations include international legal structures, law suits in the domestic courts, the use of formal displomatic channels and in the context of pollution across the U.S./Caanda boundary, national legislation in both countries supposedly providing for control of international air pollution.

However, domestic suits are too limited in their scope. Diplomatic channels are, failing successful negotiation of a formal air quality accord, not adequate to promote the changes in national energy and environmental policies which may be necessary to avoid widespread environmental damage. The international legal structure offers useful principles of environmental responsibility, but they are neither sufficiently defined nor sufficiently enforceable to support effective application to specific controversies. Finally, the international provisions in the Clean Air Act in the United States and Caanda, while admirable in their intent, are too generally formulated and too vulnerable to domestic political pressures to yield the needed changes in national environmental policies.

The fundamental question presented by the acid rain problem is whether industrialized society can respond intelligently to emerging scientific information describing limits in the earth's tolerance to man-made pollution. Environmental acidification is only the most immediate of a number of serious international pollution problems. The GLOBAL 2000 REPORT, prepared by the President's Council on Environmental Quality in 1980, describes a widening range of severe and sweeping environmental threats that nations can only hope to effectively address through cooperative international action. The build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the contamination of the oceans with persistent toxic chemicals are two of the most prominent examples.

The precedent established in response to today's comparatively straightforward acid rain issue will set the tone for crucial efforts to head off these and other international environmental problems in coming years. Recent West German and U.S. actions could prove especially significant. In seeking separathe national sciences, the U.S. is moving in a direction which could lead to increasingly serious international environmental disputes. National governments are unlikely to agree on the appropriate response to transboundary problems if they do not share similar views regarding their severity and causes.

In contrast, as the first major industrial power to establish a large-scale emission reduction program to combat acid rain and seek international requirements to reduce transboundary pollution, the West German government has set a key precedent and given the Scandinavian campaign a substantial boost. Moreover, their actions have demonstrated how a nation fearing irreversible environmental effects can overcome through the political process the scientific uncertainty which so often immobilizes policymakers.