There was some interesting discussion in the comments to this post. Brad DeLong says this:
Doesn't the name "Richard Schmalensee", member of George H.W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers belong in this story somewhere, as the driver of market-friendly environmental protection policies in the U.S. government for four years? …
While Schmalensee has written much on the acid rain program (e.g., Schmalensee and Stavins 2013), it took some digging for me to find something that gives him credit for its implementation. But I did find it. Here is footnote 33 from Stavins (2006):
References:
Schmalensee, Richard, and Robert N. Stavins. "The SO₂ Allowance Trading System: The Ironic History of a Grand Policy Experiment." The Journal of Economic Perspectives (2013): 103-121.
Stavins, Robert N. "Market-based environmental policies: what can we learn from US experience (and related research)?" in Jody Freeman and Charles, D. Kolstad, Moving to Markets in Environmental Regulation: Lessons from Twenty Years of Experience: Lessons from Twenty Years of Experience. Oxford University Press, 2006.
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