Environment

The environment expresses the concern that man has henceforth of nature, either in itself, or because in destroying it he destroys himself. The interests are thus crossed and cumulated: nature is protected in itself, for him and for the generations to come.

A branch of law was born, "Environmental Law", of which it can not be said whether it belongs to public or private law. It was until recently conceived as an administrative police, based on declarations, authorizations, classifications of the activities generating pollution, and organization of the treatment of waste. We are in the process of switching to environmental regulation, as shown by the new texts of European law, designed by the European Commission that link energy regulation and environmental regulation.

In the long term, it is a question of planning and organizing a healthy environment, thanks to renewable energies, not so much on the basis of constraints or one-off interventions but rather on the basis of incentives and market mechanisms such as CO2 quotas (allocation of quotas to companies by the state and then emergence of prices by meeting the supply and demand thanks to the market), this construction of long-term equilibria on and from the market being itself the sign of regulation.

The "environmental concern" has also been established with financial regulation, in two ways. In the first place, financial techniques are a means of developing tools for the environment, as are the CO2 markets, but also the specific obligations of what would be an environmental compliance for listed companies. Financial regulators of new missions. In the second place, environmental issues are themselves financialized, as if they identify new risks and reveal new uncertainties: as such, the Banking and Financial Regulators appreciate them.