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After showing different criteria for assessing economic theories and in general terms the growth of (economic) knowledge, the essentials of classical British economic theory (Political Economy) are outlined. Next the scientific career and the genesis of the works of Ricardo are dealt with. The building blocks of his theory are Malthus' law of population and his own theory of land rent. They serve as a basis for developing his original theory of income distribution among the three classes of society (landowners, tenants, agricultural workers). His vision is - like that of Adam Smith - a self-adjusting model of the economy. Getting at first rid of rent, his intention was to show that - in contrast to Smith - a decrease of profits is the result of an increase in wages. Rent is a price determined, but not a price determining factor. The decline of profits reduces capital accumulation and economic growth and ends up in a stationary state of the economy. The precondition of his analysis of income distribution was a theory of value. Ricardo selected the quantity of embodied labour as an invariable measure of value. From a political point of view Ricardo opposed state interventions, such as the corn laws and the poor laws. He had trust in a self-regulating economy, unlike his friend and critic Thomas Malthus.

With coming into force of the Directive 2003/87/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the community (EU ETS) has begun in 2005. Emission trading is a flexible instrument to abate emissions within the framework of the Kyoto-Protocol. Up to this time command-and-control regulations and national emission or energy taxes were predominant within environmental policy. The German Pollution Protection Law (Bundesimmissionsschutzgesetz) and emission trading were incompatible. As a result the EU-Directive released approved industrial installations, which take part in emission allowance trading, from fulfilling their duty to keep marginal emission values. It is the purpose of this paper to present and elucidate the sectoral system of emission allowance trading according to the EU-Directive and its legal consequences. To start with integral parts of the science and the economics of climate change are subjects under debate. In particular the discounting of future damage costs is looked at. After that the political architecture of climate-change policy and its instruments is dealt with in detail. In the following the broadening of the established German Pollution Protection Law with regard to the EU-Directive is in the fore, besides that the national rules of allocation of EU emission allowances to entitled enterprises.

Die gegenwärtige Lage in der Abfallwirtschaft in Deutschland ist durch die Durchsetzung der geltenden Anforderungen an die Abfallbeseitigung (Vorbehandlung von Abfall, Deponieabdichtung) und daraus folgend einen zeitweiligen Kapazitätsengpass für die Beseitigung von vorzubehandelnden Abfällen aus Haushalten und die Mitverbrennung von Gewerbeabfällen gekennzeichnet. Versäumnisse auf privater und kommunaler Ebene in der Umsetzung der TA Siedlungsabfall und ein Wandel in der Abfallpolitik (Privatisierung von Gewerbeabfall zur Verwertung, Verpackungsverordnung) hatten bis dahin eine Unterauslastung der kommunalen Entsorgungsanlagen zur Folge. Um den Wandel in der Abfallentsorgung von einem anfänglich befürchteten "Müllnotstand" über den darauf folgenden "Kampf um den Abfall" zwischen öffentlich-rechtlichen und privaten Entsorgern hin zu einem neuerlichen "Entsorgungsengpass" erklären zu können, wird im Anschluss an die umwelt-ökonomische Charakterisierung der Abfallwirtschaft (2.) deren rechtlicher Ordnungsrahmen und dessen Vollzug in Auszügen behandelt und problematisiert. Gegenstand von Kap. 4 ist die Bepreisung der Leistungen der Abfallbeseitigung in Form der Gebührenkalkulation der Kommunen und deren ökonomische und ökologische Ausgestaltung. Als Alternative zur gegenwärtig gespaltenen Regulierung werden in Kap. 5 Varianten der Effizienzsteigerung und der Privatisierung der Abfallwirtschaft kontrovers diskutiert. Eine Privatisierung der Aufgabenverantwortung im Unterschied zur Aufgabenerfüllung erweist sich in der Abfallwirtschaft als unzulässig. Schlussfolgerungen zur Lage und zur Reform der Abfallwirtschaft bilden den Abschluss (6.). ; At present, the utilization of waste products in Germany is characterized by the enforcement of rigorous environmental standards (pre-treatment of waste, sealing of dumps) and following from that a temporary capacity problem regarding the disposal of pre-treated household refuse and the incineration of calorie intensive trade refuse. The privatization of commercial waste for utilization under the Waste Management Law of 1996 resulted in a low level of capacity utilization of municipal waste treatment facilities. Besides, the requirements concerning the (thermal or mechanical-biological) pre-treatment of waste are not met on time, as a consequence of omissions at local level and privately. In order to explain the fundamental change from the former "battle over waste" among privately owned and municipal enterprises to the present bottleneck in refuse disposal, first of all the waste industry is briefly characterized in the context of environmental protection (2.). After that its legal framework is dealt with in an abridged version and partly commented on (3.). In this the basic problem is the distinction between energetic waste utilization and thermal waste disposal that is in dispute in case of waste incineration. The actual legal practice of the European Court of Justice has resulted in a utilization instead of the former disposal friendly interpretation of the concept of waste. It contributed – among other reasons – to a surplus capacity of municipal incinerating plants. The object of chapter 4 is the calculation of fees of the different services of waste disposal and their possible ecological design. As an alternative solution of regulating the utilization of waste products in form of the current juxtaposition of public and private refuse disposal and waste utilization, its possible further privatization is dealt with controversially. A few variants from this are distinguished in more detail like competition in and for the market, besides the increase of efficiency in the present legal and organizational framework. Privatization of governmental duties in case of the utilization of waste products is limited to the performance of but does not include the responsibility for its tasks.