Yet this market-based program didn’t go far enough. In 1999,
Gene Likens and his colleagues found that acidification was still worsening at the Hubbard Brook forest, which was shrinking fast. And as of 2007,
the George C. Marshall Institute is still calling acid rain a “largely hypothetical” threat that requires more research. Research by technology historians Margaret Taylor and David Hounshell suggests that strict regulation would control pollution far better than cap-and-trade, as it would give companies a true economic incentive to innovate in the field. But instead, “doubt-mongering” delayed the regulation process for years, and the scientists who did it began branching out into other fields.