What is the environmental good or service that people value?
To what extent is the good or service joint? Is there a geographical limit to the jointness? Are there any congestion effects?
Is exclusion possible in this case? If not, is the source of the problem technological, legal or some other issue?
If exclusion is a problem, might there be a complementary good that is excludable that might be used as a means of charging a price?
Is it feasible to use the legal system and the assignment of property rights to deal with the issue?
How might the assignment of property rights affect transactions costs and the efficiency of the outcome?
Would it be possible to design taxes, fees or marketable permits to help solve the problem?
What are some of the difficult design characteristics for a fee or permit system in your particular example?
How might the EPA or other relevant government agency obtain information about the marginal benefits (or marginal damage avoided) of the proposed policy?
Can you present any data you have found that might indicate the marginal costs or benefits of different policies for your particular example?
Are there any significant “second best” issues that arise in your example? How might the policy instruments you are considering handle them?
Are there any difficult monitoring or enforcement issues associated with the proposed policy instruments? What kinds of information or procedures might best handle these?
Do the proposed policies have any serious limitations associated with the need to trade off flexibility and predictability?
Do the proposed remedies ignore other possibly much lower cost remedies? Do the costs of improved life spans or health implicit in the policy approximately equal the values placed on these same benefits in other contexts?
Does the proposed regulation or other policy involve implicit insurance against future risks? Can those risks be evaluated objectively, and if so how does the implicit “insurance premium” compare with the costs of insuring against other comparable risks?
Can the proposed policy be viewed as a type of investment and if so how does the risk-return trade-off compare with other investments society can make?
Does the externality you are examining involve multiple governments or jurisdictions? If so, are there special problems in coordinating action and if there are how might coordination be achieved?