Chapter 5: Bill Drayton
1.) The system that Bill Drayton encountered was the need for better policies in regards to the companies waste management and the need for it to be environmentally friendly. In order to understand how he encountered his system, one would have to look at his background.
Bill first started out at a young age being involved in making social changes. He became extremely interested in Ghandi's non-violent tactics to making a difference in a community. What he really liked about Ghandi's point of view was how he recognized a new type of ethics that would be established in empathy, rather than rules. By the early 20th century, empathy became a powerful force in the world and Ghandi used political instruments to make an impact. Because he was fascinated with the India culture, he investigated more time and effort into learning about Ashoka, an emperor of India who built up his reign by unifying India through war. Although he unified the people, he became remorseful afterward and for the duration of his life, spent his time propagated values of non-violence.
Drayton saw the "how-to's" of all his role models and took an aspect of each of them in order to fuel himself to do what he wanted to do. Some things he created that helped bring people to make a difference was starting a group at Harvard, called the Ashoka Table, that gave students an opportunity to meet with business professionals and ask them real questions about the business world in society. He also founded the Yale Legislative Services, during his time at Yale law, to match up students with law makers in six different states to help them craft social policy.
Drayton also worked at McKinses & Company, a company that focused on public issues such as housing, unemployment and minority economic development. Soon afterward, he led a team that reworked mechanisms for environmental enforcement in Connecticut; which hoped to remove incentives for polluters in the state to stop tying up cases in court and to actually solve the issues.
This later led to him acquiring a job at the EPA-Enviornmental Protection Agency.
2.) The need and problems that Bill faced were that factories were giving off hydrocarbons and basic air pollution into the atmosphere which causes an effect on weather and the air quality in certain places. He also saw that there were different process in the plant that would release air pollution and that each regulatory system put in place was written by different people at different times; and overall, did not coincide with each other.
3.) They attempted to change the understand of the situation by giving a solution which he called "The Bubble". The Bubble is a framework that allows engineers in a factory or a bunch factories, to control how much emissions are being put out, in accordance with the laws and policies that are enacted. The difference in this system to a normal 'bubble' system that is seen in other types of law, is that the people can make proposals to the government about how to set emission limits. Drayton also wanted to change the political dynamic by making it more attractive for business to fight pollution rather than one fighting the EPA.
An example that he gave was to give plant managers and engineers to develop new pollution control technologies and at the same time, give them economic incentives for using these technologies.
4.) He changed the system by encouraging people to search for greenhouse gas-reduction opportunities on Earth. An example he gave was to have a system that allowed a company in Ohio to clean up the smoke pollution emissions from a factory in Calcutta. Drayton truly believed that a tough regulatory framework would free the market from an over-abundance amount of work
5 & 6.) Some problems he occurred were that environmentalists were opposed to using the market to achieve public policy goals and hardliners did not feel the government should consider the cost of pollution. One strong opposer was Ronald Reagan and his administration. They wanted to drastically cut funding to the EPA by two thirds! Drayton saw this as a way for them to win a fight that they could not win by destroying an institution that was making great process. (In the late 1970's, there was a wave of environmental laws being passed that regulated the use and disposal of toxic chemicals). Drayton then used newspapers and other sources to bring up the issue to the people. He made an organization called Save EPA that was designated to research ways to expose to America how cutting the EPA budget will harm them and make them exposed to toxic pollutants, in addition to other things. He also used the information founded by Save EPA and gave it to the Democrats in order for them to exploit the Reagan administration and what they were doing. He explains how he wanted to "make it obvious to them that it will be political torture for them, unless they stopped fighting". In the long run, they only lost one-third of their budget but Drayton believes it could have been a lot worse.
7.) Because of the new system and policies put forth by the EPA (such as the Clean Air Act), there has been significant reductions in sulfur dioxide pollutions which is the source of acid rain. In 2003, European Parliament launched the world's first international global emissions-trading market to curb carbon dioxide output from 10,000 companies (who are responsible for 46 percent of emissions in the European Union). In addition, California hopes to link their emission trading system with the EU system to help reduce emissions overall.
Concepts that Bill was advocating for (ideas that seemed almost ridiculous) as advocated for nearly everyone today and the ways they control pollution. Overall, the system now works by companies joining together (The Bubble) to reduce pollution emissions and more policies have been enacted in governments around the world.
